Bait and Switch
by TB's LMC
Summary: Steve swears she's his mom, but Danny's sixth sense…his cop sense…his Steve sense…tells him that something isn't right. Problem is, Danny may not be sticking around long enough to prove it. And their friendship may not survive this even if he does.
1. Chapter 1

_Summary: She's not his mother. Steve swears she is, but Danny's sixth sense…his cop sense…his _Steve_ sense…tells him that _something _isn't right. Problem is, Danny may not be sticking around long enough to prove it. And their friendship may not survive this even if he does._

_Author's Note: This story takes place after the Season 2 finale, so there could be spoilers for anything and everything in both seasons up to and including that. I have no idea where the show's creators are going, so I'm quite sure this is completely AU. Enjoy!_

_Acknowledgment: With deepest and sincerest thanks to my Plot Partner Samantha Winchester, without whom I never could've kept all the story lines straight, and whose brilliant ideas and trains of thought inevitably lead to the best destinations._

* * *

**BAIT AND SWITCH**

* * *

Grace has no idea what's going on, and that's just how Danny wants it. He's sure that in spite of the fact that this is all stemming from Rachel and Stan's decision to leave Hawaii after dragging Grace there only two years prior, Rachel doesn't want their daughter in the middle of this any more than Danny does.

Except she is by default. She can't help but be. Because the only reason Danny left New Jersey was his little girl, because Rachel decided to marry a wealthy man who moves from project to project and go five thousand miles from home. Because there isn't a world, dimension or universe in which Danny doesn't want to be there to watch Grace grow up.

Now, after two years living, laughing, loving and nearly getting killed more times than he cares to count, in a place Danny never wanted to be, Rachel's trying to uproot them all again. And at this point Danny could care less what Rachel wants because this time he really is over her. There's just one problem, though. In spite of the fact that she's no longer married to Danny, where Grace is concerned, she has him by the balls.

And he hates it. Hates _her_. After everything they'd gone through, after what they'd almost done together. After he'd helped deliver another man's _son_…this was her thanks to him. Nearly a year later, she lays this on him, having a court filing delivered to him via her attorney's courier. Without so much as a phone call or an email or a sit-down over a cup of her damn English tea, she blindsides him with the fact that she's taking his baby girl away from him.

Again.

He supposes it's only partially her fault, if he's honest about it. After all, it's not _her_ doing that Stan's new project is in Las Vegas. It's _Stan's_. Stan, who took a bullet to try and save Grace's life. Who's been nothing but nice to Danny in spite of the fact that he's Stan's wife's ex-husband who _shot_ him. Only maybe, Danny considers, maybe there's been a reason Stan's been so nice. Maybe it's because the bastard knew this was coming all along.

After all, massive building projects don't just happen overnight. In order for it to be something worth packing up and moving for, it has to be an expensive thing, and that sort of deal takes lots of time to seal. For all Danny knows, it's been in the works since before they'd all moved to Hawaii to begin with.

And Rachel has never so much as hinted that Hawaii might not be their permanent dwelling place.

She'd been so ready to leave Stan, leave Hawaii. Return to New Jersey and resume the Williams family as though nothing had ever broken it up to begin with. So ready to lay claim to Danny's life once more and pull him away from a group of people he'd come to love like they were his own flesh and blood.

And then no, because the baby wasn't his and she was still in love with Stan and she and Grace were coming back. And then Danny had been there for the birth of the son that wasn't his. He'd sent photos of the baby to the man who _was_ the father. And Steve had spent that entire evening keeping Danny from falling into the mother of all funks.

Steve.

Danny scrubs a hand over his face, finally turning the Camaro's engine off but still just sitting there staring at the McGarrett house in front of him. All he can hear in his mind right now are Steve's hushed and hurried words as he'd phoned him from the airport in Tokyo.

"_Danny, it's my mom! My _mom_! She's alive, and she's coming home with me!"_

That had been four days ago, and Steve and his mother had been back in Hawaii for two of those days. Presumably catching up. Presumably Steve finding out the actual truth behind what had happened when he was a teen and was told she'd been killed in a car accident. The truth about his father, about Wo Fat. Maybe about Governor Jameson and the Hesse brothers. About the reasons behind the shit that had flung him so far from his beloved home, only to yank him right back when his other parent had been murdered.

Only Danny's spider-sense has been tingling nonstop since Steve's call, in spite of the fact that he'd had Grace for three whole days when she'd gotten Monday off from school for Memorial Day, and in spite of the fact that most of yesterday he'd spent with the local attorney he'd hired to fight Rachel's petition.

The thing is that Danny wants desperately to be happy right now, even for something that has nothing to do with his impending knock-down, drag-out fight with Rachel. He wants to be happy for Steve, that Steve's mother isn't actually dead, that he now has her back in his life. But when his gut continues to churn every time he thinks about that being the case, he _knows_ something's off, even though he hasn't yet set eyes on the woman in question.

"_Come over, Danny. Mary's here, and I'd like you to meet our mom. We'll grill some steak and shrimp, what do you say?"_

What _can_ he say? No, I want to check into this person who's supposedly your mother before I meet her so I know who she _really_ is? Danny doesn't have a leg to stand on, and how can Steve be wrong about his own _mother_, for Christ's sake? It's not like the guy hadn't known her for sixteen years. Sure, she would've aged, but Steve would still _know_ if it wasn't her.

Wouldn't he?

Danny sighs when he sees the front door swing open and his six-foot partner walk out of it toward the car. He pulls the keys out of the ignition, grabs his phone from its place on the dashboard mount and opens the door. Steve is right there already and goddamn if he doesn't have the happiest look on his face that Danny has ever seen.

Why the hell is Danny so certain if he opens his mouth he'll wipe that face off permanently and maybe destroy the best friendship he'd ever had in the process?

"I'm glad you came. I really want you to meet her," are the words that tumble out of Steve's mouth. He's bouncing on the balls of his feet like a kid and Danny supposes he can see why. After all, the last time Steve had his mom he'd been a kid, so… "What's wrong?"

Danny struggles to school his face into a happy one as he gets out of the car and closes the door behind him. Before he can even turn to face Steve, the man's all up in his personal space.

"Is it Grace? What's happening with the petition? Are you going to court? What'd the lawyer say?"

That verbal diarrhea actually _does_ make Danny laugh, and he turns, putting his fingertips against his partner's chest and gently shoving him back a couple steps. "Down, boy," he says good-naturedly and Steve has the decency to blush a little. "I spent three glorious days with my daughter, then the better part of a day with my lawyer and…" His voice trails off. He sighs, shakes his head, scrubs a hand down his face. "It's going to get ugly. And I probably won't win."

It's the first time he's said those words aloud.

Steve's hand is on his shoulder, then suddenly he's reeling Danny in and giving him a firm hug with no hand-slapping involved. "There's got to be something we can do," he says as he releases him. "Maybe the governor—"

"Whoa, slow down there, Buster," Danny says, shaking his head. "Jameson did the favor of interceding the first time because she wanted to keep us all on an even keel for her own nefarious purposes; keep you happy so you'd stay here."

Steve's face clouds at the mention of the woman.

"Governor Denning isn't her. Thank God, for the most part, but he isn't and I doubt he really cares whether I stay or go."

Steve's eyes flash, a fierce look taking up residence on his face. "Well, _I_ care." And damn if there isn't just the tiniest hint of a pout that follows.

"I know," Danny says. "So do I." He smiles wryly. "That's why I'm trying to fight it, even if it puts all our dirty laundry out there for all the world to see. But I have to be realistic. If I couldn't win when I was surrounded by more than twenty close relatives who'd always be there to help me take care of my daughter in Jersey, why would I win when I have a more dangerous job than I've ever had before and no one to point to as backup?"

Now Steve just looks plain hurt and Danny's mind races to figure out why.

"You've got backup. You've got us all, me and Chin, Malia and Kono. You've got my mom now, too, and Kamekona."

Ah. Danny gets it now. "That's not what I meant. The majority of the people you just mentioned are in the same dangerous job as I am. One is a wife who got kidnapped and nearly killed, one is a former criminal who conceals a stash of frightening weapons on his property and the other one was just resurrected from the dead. So you can see how this doesn't look so good for me in front of a judge."

And Steve's stricken face is on in full force.

"Come on," Danny says, nudging Steve's arm with his elbow and starting out for the house. "Introduce me to the woman you swear held you as a child. I will ask her, and I will see if you've been telling me the truth about that."

It does the trick, makes Steve laugh as they enter the house, as he closes the door behind him. "They're out back," Steve tells him, leading Danny through the house to the kitchen, his excitement back in place.

Danny just wishes he knew for sure whether the fact that he feels like he's about puke is because this might be one of the last happy moments he gets to share with Steve, or because the happy moment isn't any more real than Rachel's supposed love for him turned out to be.

But he mans up, plasters a smile on his face, and follows Steve out to the two white wooden chairs down by the water, where he sees the backs of two women's heads. One he recognizes immediately as Mary Ann's short-cropped hair. The other has wavy hair the same color as Steve's, also cut short.

When she turns around and smiles the same exact smile that Steve has, Danny's stomach plummets right down to his toes. Because he knows without needing a DNA test that this woman is most definitely mother to the man by his side.

Yet all he can think, all his gut is telling him, is that Steve's world is about to explode around him…possibly blowing everyone he loves up right along with it.


	2. Chapter 2

"So you're Detective Williams," she says, rising from the chair to reveal she's roughly a couple inches taller than Danny. "Judy McGarrett." She holds her hand out.

Danny takes that hand and the second their palms meet, knows his gut instinct is right on-target. He just doesn't know _how_. Not that he's psychic or anything, he just…goddammit.

Plasters a smile on his face, meets her eyes. "Pleased to meet you, Mrs. McGarrett," he says, shaking firmly while at the same noting every minute detail about her.

Large hazel eyes, Steve-shaped mouth. Definitely where his partner gets _those_ two features from. Narrow, perfectly-shaped nose. Smallish ears. Hints of gray at her temples…yet another thing Steve inherited from her, obviously. Strong, sure jawline, confident chin. Pretty much like Steve's. Slightly built like Mary Ann, and Danny suddenly realizes Steve's sister's got their mother's nose as he looks beyond to see her standing there appearing more than just a little shell-shocked.

So either she's not buying whatever excuse her mom has given them for bowing out of their lives so unceremoniously, or she's simply not as happy to see the woman as her brother is.

"Please, just call me Judy," snaps him back to looking at the woman in question.

Danny smiles and nods, then looks at his partner. "Need a little help with the food, babe?"

There's the tiniest of pauses that Danny's pretty certain only he's noticed, but then Steve says, "Sure, I'll start the grill, can you get the shrimp and bucket out?" He waves a hand toward the house. "You know where everything is."

Danny nods as Mary Ann moves to stand in front of him. "What, no hug for the sis?"

He gives a genuine grin, always happy to see 'the sis' indeed. His arms go around her, but she feels stiff in them and he whispers into her ear, "What's wrong?"

She shakes her head minutely, and Danny pulls back just enough to see her face, concerned when he notes the sorrow in her eyes. "Not now," she whispers and he nods in acknowledgement.

Great. So Steve's happy as a clam, Judy is sitting back down in the chair and picking up the glass of tea she's obviously been nursing like all is right with the world, and Mary Ann looks like she's either going to have a nervous breakdown or see if she can't rival her brother's penchant for blowing shit up. Not to mention the fact that Danny isn't sure how he's going to get through fondling a couple pounds of shrimp, let alone trying to eat them, the way his stomach's doing flip-flops.

"Okay," he murmurs to Mary as he pulls away from her. "I'd better head in and start on those shrimp or Steve might take to trying to shoot their shells of them himself," he says a little louder for everyone's benefit.

"You don't shell them _yet, _Danny, and I am _not_ that trigger happy," Steve protests as Danny heads for the patio with his partner in tow.

"Don't you even, McGarrett," Danny jabs back at him. "I've seen your itchy trigger finger in action one too many times to believe it for a second. You're just trying to impress your mother with how dangerous you _aren't_."

This earns him Aneurism Face, which Danny will take as a minor victory, disappearing into the house to avoid whatever comeback Steve might have planned.

It all seems so normal.

When it's anything but.

He's barely gotten the shrimp out of the refrigerator and fetched the shrimp bucket from a lower cabinet over in the corner of the kitchen when Steve suddenly appears next to him like the goddamn ninja that he is.

"Okay, what's going on?"

Danny puts the bucket down on the counter next to the tub of shrimp. He turns to Steve and looks him right in the eye. "What do you mean?"

Flip-flop. Flippity-flop.

"Danny, you were barely civil to my mother and you and Mary were whispering to each other. What the hell's going on?"

Churn, churn, churn goes Danny's stomach.

"I shook your mother's hand and showed my very good Jersey-bred manners, thank you very much, your sister was saying hello and I am in here getting ready to help you prepare for a barbecue, so why do you think something's going on?"

Steve crowds up into his breathing space, backing him into the counter as he glares right into his eyes. "I know you. Something's wrong."

"You're _right_!" Danny explodes, shoving past his partner. "I'm about to lose my daughter _again_!" And no, this wasn't what had been making Danny act the way he was but fuck, that didn't mean it wasn't gnawing at him like flesh-eating bacteria. "Jesus Christ, Steve, I'm sorry, but you fly off to Japan with Joe, you come back here with a dead woman who's no longer dead, and this may be one of the last times I get to be here in your house at _all_, so excuse the _fuck_ out of me for not bringing off happy like I'm Mickey Motherfucking Mouse in Disneyland, all _right_? _Fuck_!"

He looks up to find Steve looking dazed, Mary Ann running in from the lanai and Judy standing just off the patio in the sand looking into the kitchen with great concern.

Steve blinks. "Danny, I—"

"No," Danny seethes because he…he can't right now, he just _can't_. He points his finger at Steve from a good two feet away, feeling his face grow hot, feeling tears prick at the backs of his eyes, feeling his heart breaking and breaking and his stomach flipping and roiling and fear clenching his heart and his whole world crumbling around him and he just _can't_. "I'm sorry," is all he can manage to get out of his mouth. He turns on heel and makes for the front door as fast as his legs can carry him.

His shirt sleeve is grabbed by a hand, but it's not the big hand of his partner like he was expecting. He stops and whirls to find it's Mary Ann. And damn if the tears he knows are welling up in his own eyes aren't reflected in hers. "Don't leave," she says…begs…_pleads_. "Please don't leave me here alone with them."

The request brings him up short.

With _them_?

"They're your _family_," he says, disbelief outlining his words. "I shouldn't be here. This reunion isn't for me, Mary."

She swipes at her eyes with one hand even as Danny sees Steve appear in the doorway between the living room and study behind her. "You're _part_ of our family," Mary says quietly. "Steve's and mine. I mean, for God's sake, you're _surf_ buddies."

As much as Danny would, right at this moment, give anything for that to be true for the rest of his days, he simply can't allow himself to have that much optimism. Last time he let himself think so positively about something it blew up in his face courtesy the truth coming out about Rachel's baby.

"I know," he finally says, then takes a deep breath and holds his hands out. She takes them and he squeezes them tightly. He can't explain his blowup, not _really_. And it's not that he doesn't want his partner full of joy, for God's sake. But he hasn't been dealing with his own emotions, and maybe that's just clouding his judgment about Judy McGarrett, about whatever Mary's motivations are in asking him not to leave. He needs to just deal with his own shit, not cast the pall of his fucked-up life over the house that for the first time in _years_ is seeing a real family reunion like no other.

"I don't want you to go," Mary whispers. "Please. Just stay for dinner?" She turns to look over her shoulder at her brother, their mother a vague shape further beyond, then looks back at Danny. "If not for Steve, then for me."

Damn McGarretts and their goddamn puppy dog eyes, brother and sister alike, Danny thinks. He squeezes her hands again and gives her a small smile. "All right. I'll stay for you, you pain-in-the-ass."

Mary grins, a real one, the first one Danny's seen out of her since he arrived. She hugs him tightly and his eyes meet his partner's over her shoulder.

Steve looks like he's afraid Danny's so brittle he'll break apart in two seconds flat if he steps the wrong way. Shit. Now Danny's gone and made a scene in front of Steve's mother the very first time he's met her, and Steve doesn't know what to do and Mary's looking between them like she knows something they don't and suddenly Danny's regretting agreeing to stay.

But he doesn't go back on his word, so he pulls himself up to his full height and heads straight for Steve, rubbing the back of his neck and then swiping a finger along the side of his nose. "Sorry, man. Didn't mean to unload on you."

Steve exhales like he's just suddenly remembered how to breathe, puts one arm around Danny's shoulder and the other around Mary Ann's and turns to head back toward the kitchen. "I'm glad you're staying."

Danny opens his mouth to try for some good old-fashioned snark about well, someone needs to clean up after Steve attempts to cook, but is cut off by Judy asking uncertainly, "Everything okay?"

"It's all right, Mom," Steve says. "There's just a lot of shit going down."

Judy nods slightly and Danny creepily feels her eyes burning holes into him as the three of them walk into the kitchen, still stuck together like the Three Musketeers or something.

And Danny's starting to be convinced by the looks Mary shoots his way as they get started rinsing the shrimp and Steve goes to grab the steaks from the fridge, that his feeling about something being off isn't just his own clouded judgment. That it isn't just his cynical nature nor his desire to steal Steve's happiness out from under him just because Danny can't seem to catch a break on his own.

Mary wants to tell him something, to the point where the little spitfire was actually _begging_ him not to go.

And when he glances to his left, he sees Judy seated at the kitchen table staring right at him.

Churn, churn, churn.

He's never going to be able to keep the steak _or_ the shrimp down.

Flip-flop.

He just wishes he knew _why_.


	3. Chapter 3

Two hours later and Danny's managed to eat half a steak and about half a pound of shrimp. Not like it's any hardship since Steve's an ace with a grill.

Danny has also managed to regale the McGarrett women with toned-down versions of some of Steve's Five-0 exploits, much to his partner's combined delight and embarrassment. But in spite of all that he realizes pretty quickly, as the table out on the lanai grows quiet, that he's still feeling like he's lost somewhere on the outer edge of the Twilight Zone.

Because Steve's mother is _here_.

She's _alive_.

She smiles like his partner. She laughs kind of like him, too. She even makes some of the same faces he does. _Huh_, he thinks at one point. _Didn't know face-making was a genetic trait._

Steve acts like he's sixteen all over again, a smile nearly continually plastered on his face. He seems completely oblivious about anything to do with his sister, almost totally focused on his mother like he's afraid if he closes his eyes she might suddenly disappear all over again.

Judy seems pretty normal, has been very interested in Danny's take on her son's brand of crazy and her own laughter has been genuine. She's _nice_, if Danny's hard-pressed to label her.

Mary has been laughing at Danny's antics like she usually does, only it doesn't reach her eyes. Not even once.

He clears his throat gently, drawing her gaze.

"I need help getting a box of photo albums out of the closet in my room," she says, rising to her feet. "Gimme a hand, Danny?"

"Sure," he says, confident that he's about to find out what's eating Mary Ann up so bad. He gets up and Steve stands, too.

"I can help, Mare," her big brother says.

Danny mentally rolls his eyes. So like a teenage boy wanting to impress his long-lost mother by appearing helpful to his younger sister. Oh, yeah. Danny'd been there. Well, not that his mother had ever been long-lost, but still.

Mary shoots her bro a look. "If I wanted _your_ help, I would've _asked you_."

"Yeah," Danny says, grinning at his partner. "She wants _me_."

Mary Ann scowls at him. "That did not sound right."

Everyone laughs as Danny and Mary move toward the lanai doors.

"You're not back in ten minutes, I'm coming in after you," Steve threatens but he's wearing a shit-eating grin to go with it.

"A lot can happen in ten minutes," Danny retorts and Mary grabs his sleeve and hauls him the rest of the way inside.

The two make their way quickly upstairs and down the hall into Mary's room, where she shuts the door behind them. She stands there with her back against it, chewing on her lower lip, eyes trained on the ceiling.

Danny turns and looks at her, then takes a step closer. "I may not know you as well as I know Steve," he says, "but you've got the same damn tells. Now what's going _on_?"

Her eyes well up with tears that spill out and roll down her cheeks. She swipes angrily at them, shaking her head and sniffling. "I don't _know_," she whispers fiercely, only then meeting his eyes.

He takes another step, bringing them almost toe to toe. He keeps his voice low. "Is it about your mom?"

She shakes her head, then nods, then looks away. "I don't know, I…" Her voice trails off.

Danny places a hand on her shoulder and guides her over to the twin bed, where he gently pushes her down onto it then sits next to her. "Talk to me."

She looks at him. "You know something's off too, don't you." It's not really a question.

He scrubs a hand down his face and sighs.

"I knew it. I knew it the second I saw you."

"Well, she _is_ your mom, isn't she?" Danny asks.

Mary nods. "I can't see how she couldn't be. She's everything I remember, except older, you know."

"Yeah, and Steve's a suspicious guy by nature. If he thought there was anything weird going on he'd never have brought her back here."

"But that's just it, Danny, that's where I think you're wrong," she says, voice confident but still quiet. "I mean, it's not like mom's death didn't impact me, you know, it's partially why I turned out so fucked up."

"Hey, you're not fucked up. My cousin Corinne, now _she's_ fucked up, what with being a meth addict and sitting in a jail cell in Queens."

Mary gives him a half-smile and shoulder-bumps him. "It's just that…I don't know…it all seems so…" She throws up her hands like she's given up trying to find the right words.

"Convenient?" Danny offers.

Her eyes widen and she looks right at him. "Yes," she nods vigorously. "Convenient and sudden and too _easy_." Danny cocks his head thoughtfully as she continues. "I mean, the way she and Steve tell it, Joe's been hiding her in Japan ever since she supposedly died in the car wreck, something the two of them and my dad cooked up once he found out what had happened, that Wo Fat had tried to kill her with that bomb."

"You don't believe them?"

Mary shrugs. "I don't know _what_ to believe. She didn't even come back when Dad was _murdered_, says she couldn't because Wo Fat would've been there, would've seen her and would've realized he'd been duped. She got all upset, even cried, when she told me how much she regretted everything that had happened, but it felt…" Mary takes a deep breath and lays a hand on Danny's leg, leaning into him and catching his eyes. "You know how you can tell when someone's not being real? You know? I mean, when they're putting on an act, even if it's a good one?"

Danny nods. Yes, unfortunately he's all too familiar with that kind of deception. For one, Rachel is hands-down better than any actress on Broadway when it comes to lying through her teeth.

"Well, it's…I don't know, I guess maybe I can tell because she's my mom or something, but it sounded like she'd rehearsed every line, every word that came out of her mouth. Like it was all scripted somehow." Mary pauses, chews her lower lip in thought. "Like she knew what Steve would say, what I would say, and had her dialog ready once she heard her cue."

"You think she's lying about why she's still alive," Danny concludes. "About what happened the day that bomb exploded that car, about why she didn't return for your dad's funeral and why she's been hiding out as Shelburne all this time."

Mary nods, hand slipping off Danny's leg, eyes still glued to his pantleg. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm glad she's alive. I am, really, I just don't think this is over, any of it, and…well, Steve's been right here ever since Dad was killed, you know?" Her hands are flapping in the air doing a mean impersonation of Danny himself, if he's being real about it.

"He took Mom's death so hard back then, and he's been hell-bent on avenging both their deaths and he's got Wo Fat in prison and now this." She shakes her head, looks up at him, looks away. "I don't know, Danny. I don't think my brother's thinking clearly enough to realize that at least _some_ of what Mom's saying isn't ringing true." She gets to her feet, paces a few times and stops in front of him. "I'm afraid if I say anything about it, it'll tear us apart for good."

"That's funny," Danny replies, also getting to his feet. "I've been thinking the same damn thing." He sighs. "I don't have anything to go on, here. I've been busy with something else since Steve called from the airport in Tokyo, and I…"

Mary is honest-to-God wringing her hands together, and Danny's suddenly reminded of his own little girl when she's upset. He reaches out and places a hand gently on her shoulder as she bites her lip, which is starting to swell from the oft-repeated gesture. "I'm really worried that if there's more to this, that when it all comes to a head because shit like this _always_ comes to a head, Steve's going to get hurt. Or worse," she finishes in a whisper.

"I'm going to do my best to look into this, okay?" he says, tries for reassuring, feels like he's missed it by a couple hundred million miles.

There's a knock at the bedroom door that startles them both. "You'd better be decent, 'cause I'm coming in!" Steve calls through the door.

Mary quickly wipes her tears away, then wraps her arms around Danny and lays her head on his shoulder.

"What the—?" Danny starts to say, but Mary digs her fingers into his back.

Oh. Cover. Right.

He quickly wraps his arms around her as Steve stands there sporting a face Danny's not quite familiar with. "Really? You came up here to hug?" Steve asks, face looking a bit more pinched on the word 'hug.'

"No, you Neanderthal, she's comforting me in my time of need," Danny snaps back, feeling the color rise up his neck.

"Oh," Steve says, happy smile back in place. "Okay." Then of all the infernal things, he's right behind his sister in two strides, leaning down and wrapping his arms around both of them and winding up with his face buried in the crook of Danny's neck. "Group hug," he states unnecessarily.

Mary Ann snorts.

Danny rolls his eyes.

Oh, how Danny's going to miss these people when he inevitably has to go.

"Get off me," he grouses, pulling away from Mary as he's slapping at Steve's arm. "The Navy had you all wrong. You're not a seal, you're a goddamn octopus."

Mary and Steve both laugh out loud.

"Now, where's that box you need help with?" Steve asks, rubbing his hands together.

"Don't worry about it," Mary says, shoving Steve ahead of her toward the door.

"Oh, my _God_, you just wanted to grope my partner," Steve says, voice stricken.

"Steven, I will shoot you if you say another word," Danny admonishes.

It sounds so damn normal.

Except that it's not.

Fuck.

Just…fuck.


	4. Chapter 4

Danny feels weirdly like he's throwing Mary to the wolves or something when he finally makes his excuses and heads toward the living room to leave an hour after what he's calling The Hug Incident. Steve walks him to the front door; at least the man's acting like he's got manners and then Danny has to shake his head because of _course_ he's got manners…his _mother_ is here.

The light is still in Steve's eyes. The smile's still on his face, if only figuratively since even a man with facial muscles as malleable as his partner's can't keep a Joker-like grin on his puss for five solid hours.

It all makes Danny feel like that much more crap as he puts his hand on the doorknob and twists it, feels Steve's hand on his shoulder. "This whole thing with Rachel," he says, and Danny turns to look up at him, feeling his blood run a little cold all of a sudden like any mention of Rachel and what's going on is just _wrong_ for his over-the-moon best friend.

"Yeah," Danny gets out, takes his hand off the door.

"You really think you're going to…" Steve seems to suddenly run out of words. Like maybe he can't say it any more than Danny can think it.

"Lose? Have to move? Live in the middle of a fucking desert which is _way_ worse than this rock even to me?" Danny swipes the back of his hand over his mouth. "More than likely." He looks away, looks at anything but those big eyes that Danny's reality just took the Happy Light from.

"Hey," Steve says, squeezing his shoulder. "There's got to be something, Danny. I'm Navy, we're the governor's task force, there's…"

When his voice trails off uncharacteristically once again, Danny makes the mistake of looking up at him again and suddenly Steve's face and eyes are reminding him of some weird animé thing Grace was watching on her iPad a couple weeks back where a big, fluffy Japanese monstrosity was about to cry and its eyes were actually _shivering_ like they were cold as they filled up with tears.

Well, thankfully, Steve's not got the tears part of it but his eyes look all big and round and shivery and Jesus, sometimes this idiot is worse than being confronted with his daughter's pleading eyes only Danny's not sure what the hell Steve would be pleading for, exactly. It's not like he can do anything more than he's doing which he knows deep down in his gut isn't going to be nearly enough.

Not _nearly_ enough to keep him in Hawaii.

He swallows hard. "You coming into the office tomorrow?" he asks, not sure if he actually manages to keep his voice steady.

Steve looks back toward the doorway leading to his father's study, then at Danny again. He's torn. Danny can see it as clearly as the dark blue polo shirt Steve's wearing. That's not what Danny wants. Steve's got his mother back. His _mother_.

"Tell you what, Boss, why don't you just stay here, hang out with Mary and your mom and we'll call you in if we catch a case, k?" is what he finally comes up with, accompanied by a pretty good smile on top of it all.

Steve's definitely in Undecided Mode, looking back toward the study again, ostensibly in the general direction of where they left Judy and Mary out on the lanai. "I need to be there," he says, and Danny's not sure if he's talking about 'there' with the female McGarretts or 'there' with Five-0 but either way, he's made up his mind that Steve needs to at _least_ take one more day with his family.

"I promise, Steven," he says, and this time his smile's genuine when Steve looks back down at him, "I will not let Kono use your grenade launcher, nor will I let Chin unencrypt those secret emails you get from 'Guns & Ammo' and we will _not_ cause any empty warehouses to explode without first ensuring you are there to reap the full benefits of our attempts to blow Oahu back down to the sea floor from whence it emerged."

Danny watches as Steve tries to process it. "Whence?" he says and Danny rolls his eyes. Then he watches as Steve's eyes light up again and his smile grows even wider. Steve laughs out loud as everything Danny said finally catches up to his brain. Then he wraps an arm around Danny's shoulders for a one-armed hug. "Okay, okay, point taken," he says. "But you call me, okay?"

"Yes, dear," Danny deadpans as he opens the doors and heads for the Camaro. "Anything you say, dear."

He gets to the Camaro, reaches down to open the door and makes the mistake of looking back at where Steve's still standing in the doorway silhouetted by light from the living room lamp, and stops short. He stares at the scene, just _stares_…because this, this stupid, inane, completely unimportant moment that's been repeated so many times over the last two years, this goddamn stupid moment right _here_…

…he may lose it.

Who's he kidding?

He probably _will_.

Just as it looks like Steve's about to come after him to find out why he's just standing there staring at him, Danny's lungs stutter to life and he feels the tears sting hot and hard and spill over onto his cheeks and can't get the fucking car started fast enough, peeling out of the driveway so blindly he barely hits the brake in time to stop before he just goes up and over the road into the ditch on the other side.

He knows Steve's standing there in his driveway wondering what the fuck but Danny's just completely lost his shit and can't go back there and take that Happy Light out of Steve's eyes again.

But it's hit him now, as he throws the car into Drive and squeals away to…he doesn't even know where, doesn't even care, because _fuck_ if this pineapple-infested hellhole hasn't become fucking _home_ now with every one of the back roads he knows, all the little alleys running between houses built too closely together in some sections of the city, the way Diamond Head looks shrouded in clouds, the way the sky will suddenly open up and drench you and the rain'll be gone five seconds later to let rainbows appear. Too many waterfalls, too much beauty, and all seared now into the landscape of his heart.

The way all those perfectly tanned bodies in bikinis and one-pieces and swim trunks and board shorts are all over the beaches lazing the hot sun away. Surfboards as far as the eye can see, riding waves with so much practiced ease. Too-pale tourists he knows'll be sunburned but figures it serves 'em right as he and Steve are driving along the waterfront looking out over the visitors' enjoyment of the place he hated _so bad_ when he came there. On their way to interview a suspect or check on a prisoner at Halawa, seeing every part of Hawaii together. Never intentionally, it was never meant to be that way, but Danny had learned Oahu through the eyes of a man who loved her like she was the one who'd given birth to him rather than Judy McGarrett.

And now, now the boy who lost his mother so tragically, who got sent away by his father…who lost contact with his only sister for more than a decade…he's home, he's safe, Wo Fat is in jail, he has his mom back, he has everything he could've wanted except maybe for his father still being alive but Danny had seen _that_ body and there was no way John had survived the bullet to his brain.

There Steve is so happy and here is Danny facing having to leave his home _again_ and _knowing_ something is wrong and worrying about Mary Ann and about Steve, about Grace, about what it'll do to her when Rachel finally nuts up and tells her she and Stan are taking them to Las Fucking Vegas. He recalls all-too-vividly the huge tears in the Newark airport the first time she'd been forced to leave him, flying so far away. The joy, the sheer, utter _joy_ of them being reunited when he'd followed her less than three weeks later.

Now it'shappening again, it's happening all over _again_ and Danny slams the butt of his hand against the steering wheel and realizes he's nearing the Iolani Palace and figures, shit, what the hell, nobody else will be there, right? So he pulls into the parking lot and turns the car off and grips the top of the steering wheel tightly with both hands. Slowly he bows forward, forehead hitting the back of his hands even as he feels the tears from his eyes drip to his thighs and knees.

Kono and Chin have come to mean more to him than even Danny has words for. And now with Malia thrown into the mix, she's been so much fun to hang out with, an addition to some of the times the team wants to bring their significant others along to bars for drinks after a tough case. If Catherine's there, Steve brings her. If Gabby's available, Danny brings her too and now he rubs his nose when he thinks about Gabby.

Gabby, whose entire life is devoted to preserving Hawaiian history, won't ever want to leave for a fucked up place like Las Vegas, and so Danny knows that relationship's pretty much in the tank now as well and has to figure out a way to tell her yeah, well, it's been fun, but you know how your life's dedicated to Hawaii? Well, mine's dedicated to my daughter and that's it.

There is no choice.

There's no way to stop before his life hits the brick wall he's barreling toward at two hundred miles per hour.

He looks up at the palace, dark and quiet, and wipes away the tears he's glad he managed to cry on his own without anyone around to witness the event.

His throat feels tight, adrenaline's kicking through his system like he's hyped up on speed, and he couldn't sleep right now even if he wanted to.

But he doesn't want to.

Because goddammit, if he's going to lose the entire life he's built for himself in a place he never wanted to be but now doesn't want to leave, he's going to do one last thing for the man who's become his best friend, brother and work wife all rolled up into one tall, dark and tattooed package.

And if the timetable in Rachel's court filing is to be believed, Danny's got less than a couple months to do it.

So he will.

He doesn't know how, but the look in Mary's eyes and his own still-tingling instincts tell him that even if Steve ends up hating him, ultimately he's got to do what he believes is best for them, whatever he can do to keep them from being hurt even more.

What if he starts digging into this and finds out something utterly devastating to his partner and the 'little sis' he treats like she really is one of his own siblings?

Or if he starts nosing around and finds out nothing at all is out of the ordinary, that he and Mary are way off-base, what then?

Well, then…then Danny can fly to Las Vegas with a clear conscience, knowing that the woman who has Steve wrapped up in a starry-eyed blanket isn't going to be yet one more person in a long line stretching throughout Steve's past to screw him over. Or to leave him.

Leave him.

Just like Danny's going to.

Danny inhales a ragged breath, pulls himself out of the Camaro and heads for the palace's front doors. Well, he's not gone yet, dammit, he thinks, running a hand through his hair and wiping his eyes on the sleeves of his shirt. He squares his shoulders as he trots up the steps.

He's a Williams.

And he'll be damned if he's going to Vegas without a fight.

He'll be damned if he lets anyone hurt the McGarrett siblings when he might have the power to stop it.

Or maybe when all's said and done, he'll just be damned.


	5. Chapter 5

Danny's got connections too, you know.

He also has people who owe him favors, and not necessarily all based in Hawaii. Okay, _most_ aren't in Hawaii but hey, he's only been here a couple years.

The first thing he does when he gets to his office is blow his nose so much he thinks he just might've blown it right off his face with that last one. Then he goes to the small kitchen, splashes water on his face and dries it off. A haphazard attempt with the fingers of his left hand to smooth his hair back accompanies plopping into his office chair where he boots up his computer. A password and a couple of clicks later, he looks up a number in his heavily encrypted and contact list and picks up the phone.

To hell with the fact that back in Newark, New Jersey it's three in the morning. He dials the number, hears three rings, and when a sleepy female voice answers he actually smiles. "Did I wake you?"

"_Danny? Danny Williams, if this is you, I'm hanging up right now, do you know what time it is?"_

Danny's smile widens. "Time to call it in," is what he says back to her.

There's silence for all of ten seconds, and then, _"What do you need?"_ followed by a loud sigh.

And so Danny tells Mandy Jenkins, a girl he'd gone to high school with that he'd actually made sure graduated by helping her with her studies throughout her senior year, exactly what it is he wants.

"I need you to get me every bit of info any part of the U.S. government has gathered on a Judith Elaine McGarrett," he tells her. "I don't care if it's CIA, FBI or if you're scraping the bottom of the barrel in township police reports. And I want to know if she's got an Interpol file, too."

"_Interpol? Are you kidding me? Just because I'm the SAC of the Newark field office doesn't mean I can go digging around in international files, Danny!"_

"Mandy, you're in charge of an FBI field office for an entire state. You can do anything you want."

There's another long pause before Mandy sighs again, and he can hear concession in her voice when she replies, _"I'll do what I can, okay? Damn, when you want a debt settled, you really want a debt settled."_

Danny leans back in his chair. "I know it's probably more than I deserve for nothing but reports, essays and final exam help."

"_No, no, no, it's not too much. But it took you seventeen years to call in this marker. What's so important about this…what'd you say her name was? McGarrett?"_

"Yeah, Judith Elaine. She's…let's just say this involves a friend of mine." Danny swallows hard. "Someone who's real important to me."

"_All right, I'll keep my nose out of the 'why' but you're still a cop, aren't you, or did you get canned in the two weeks since I last talked to you? How come you don't just go through channels?"_

"I still am, but going through channels means other people will know I'm asking questions," Danny replies. "This has got to be on the QT, Mandy. And I mean more QT than your standard investigations. I'm talking radio silence here, you got me?"

"_Jesus Christ, Danny, who is this woman?"_

"That's exactly what I need you to find out, Man," Danny replies, gut still wanting to do nasty turnovers as a dozen possible answers to that question come to mind, none of them good. "I can tell you that she's spent a good deal of the last several years in Japan, maybe as many as the last couple of decades. I know basic info, but I need to know the truth."

"_Okay, consider me on it. Don't call my cell again; I'll have it buried so no one can find your number in the records. How do you want me to get whatever I come up with sent your way?"_

Danny thinks about that for a few seconds. "Send an email to Zonked On It, all one word, at fidget dot com."

"_What the hell kind of email address is that?"_

Danny grins. "An untraceable one courtesy of a Confidential Informant who's high more than he's not, but is the hacker from hell."

"_Okay, I'll start digging around tomorrow, but it'll take me a couple of days to find the best secure backchannel to the CIA, never mind Interpol."_

"Thanks, Mandy. If you come through, I'm going to owe _you_."

"_Damn straight. Which means I get a trip to Hawaii and a free place to stay, Williams."_

He wants to chuckle, but since he may not be here for very much longer himself, he can't. "I'll see what I can do, Man. Stay safe."

"_You too."_

With that he hangs up the phone and stares at his computer desktop for almost a whole minute. Then his eyes land on the icon for their link into the HPD database. He double-clicks the program open and waits for it to connect. He types in his user name and password, and within seconds is keying in Judy McGarrett's info and asking the software to retrieve her file.

Which, it tells him, isn't online.

That's when he remembers that Chin had gone to HPD early on to try and find the hard copy file, only to be told it was missing. Steve had mentioned it to Danny while they were talking about his father's murder a while later. So that means there isn't going to be anything Danny can look up via HPD. He shuts the program down and drums his fingers on his desk.

Short of sitting on his thumbs waiting for Mandy to come back with something he can at least look into, Danny isn't quite certain what else he can do here. Then he gets an idea. Whatever is or isn't the truth regarding Judy McGarrett, there's another person very clearly involved here since he's the one who took Steve to Japan. Who was in charge of keeping this 'Shelburne' safe and out of Steve's reach.

Joe White.

Danny thinks it's time he did some digging on _him_.

So he starts by doing something that could not only cost him his job, but get Steve into a whole shitload of trouble. He goes to the U.S. Navy website, then modifies the URL to point to a secret entry point for officers with a certain level of security clearance. From memory, he types in a user name and a password, then a second catch phrase that changes every other week. The ghosting he did of Steve's officer Naval email provides that last bit. _So much for following proper procedure_, he thinks.

And just like that, he's used Steve's login information to gain access to U.S. Navy personnel records. He knows he's got to make his search quick, so he types in Joe White's name and rank, wondering if Steve's ever realized that during his disappearance in North Korea, Danny managed to get his hands on this – and some other pretty classified – information. He doubts it, and at this point could care less.

Because he's got answers to find for the sake of a man who would probably never speak to him again if he knew what Danny was doing right now at this very moment.

Joe's info comes up, Danny quickly downloads it onto a flash drive he grabs from his desk drawer, and then he logs off and cleans out the browser cache and history from within Internet Explorer. After that he digs into the computer's hard drive and manually deletes everything from all folders having to do with IE, and finally goes and deletes a critical Windows program the way he once saw Chin do at a suspect's house to finish things off. When he reboots, he gets the blue screen of death.

Just like that, Danny's made it so Chin will have to reformat his hard drive, completely wiping what's on it now. And Chin _always_ makes sure when he reformats a drive to do so in a way that nothing deleted on the previous image can ever be resurrected from it again.

Hey, he may never have been a computer genius, but you hang around a guy like Chin for two years, you pick up a few things, you know?

So there it is. Danny's just done something blatantly illegal and potentially destructive to his friendship with one Steven J. McGarrett.

And while he doesn't _want_ anything to actually come of it, he can't help as he pockets the flash drive, believing that something will. Something that'll hurt Steve and Mary really badly.

Thing is, he's never been wrong before; not with things this big. And right now, he hates that fact. _Hates_ it.

He shakes his head, picks his keys up off the desk and heads out of the palace. Time to go home, put on a pot of coffee and start looking through Joe's service record. At least it gives him something constructive to do while he's waiting to hear back from Mandy.

His cell phone rings as he's getting into the Camaro. He pulls it out of his pocket and sees the goofy photo of Steve he took right as he was waking up from a power nap in the office thanks to Danny tickling his nose just to be a dick. Steve looks like a complete moron, and it's one of Danny's favorite shots to date just because it makes him laugh.

So he's chuckling by the time the thumbs the line open.

"_Danno? What are you laughing at?"_

"You, now what do you want at eleven-thirty at night, McGarrett?" he says testily. Hey, he has appearances to keep up.

"_I wanna know what the hell that stunt pulling out of my driveway was."_

"And it took you over half an hour to call and ask me this?"

"_I spent that time trying to explain to my mother about you."_

Danny stiffens in his seat. "Explain what?"

"_That we're…that you're…you know."_

"That we're…you're…no, I don't know. Use your words, Steven."

"_Fuck you, Danno."_

Danny laughs out loud. "No thanks, big guy, I was never into tattoos."

Steve snorts. _"Bull, you love my tats."_

"Be that as it may, what precisely was it you were trying to explain to your mother?"

"_Why you seemed like you were bipolar and had forgotten to take your meds."_

The smile drifts away from Danny's face. He rubs his eyes. "Yeah, I'm sorry about that. I really am."

"_Don't be sorry. Just talk to me, huh? You have a lot of shit going down. We're friends, you know, like I said before."_

"I know," Danny says and shit, it's not like he doesn't want to rant and rave and have his partner calm him down and help him out. But Steve's got so much going on himself right now, it's just…aww, shit. Danny's so tired of thinking about it. Any of it. "Maybe a beer, just you and me this weekend for old time's sake, huh?"

He hears the smile in Steve's voice. _"Just you and me, huh, Danno? You getting all sensitive on me again?"_

_If only he knew_, Danny thinks. "Just shut up before I rescind my idea."

"_You can't rescind an idea. Once you've put it out there, it's there, you can't just take it back."_

"Do _not_ tell me what I can and can't do with my own ideas! Just…would you hang up now, please? I need to drive home and you know how I feel about using cell phones while I'm driving."

There's a short pause. _"You're not home yet? Where are you, do you need me to come get you?"_

Oops. Danny must be more tired than he realizes if he's slipped up like that. "No, just stopped off at the store for a few things. Man cannot live by cold pizza alone, contrary to my own assertions of same."

"_Drive carefully, Danny," _is what Steve says to him next and dammit, Danny hates when he gets all nice because snark is so much more comfort to him right now.

"G'night, big guy," he says in response, hears Steve's little snort, can imagine the smile on his face and hangs up on the idiot before he starts getting all sappy in the face of his impending departure.

That conversation…it'd been almost normal between the two of them.

He keeps thinking that.

And keeps concluding with, _But it's not_.

The flash drive that's digging into his hip from inside his pants pocket is a painful reminder of that all-too-stark fact.


	6. Chapter 6

Danny has been over Joe's personnel file five times in the same number of hours. He rubs his eyes, which he's sure are probably bloodshot right now for how dry and scratchy they feel. He knows he's got eyedrops in his medicine cabinet, so he heads for the bathroom, leaving his laptop on the coffee table with the flash drive still plugged into one of the USB ports and the file still open on the desktop.

The sun is just starting to turn the sky shades of pink as he flicks on the light switch and counteracts Nature with a man-made yellow glow that makes him stop and squint against its glare for a moment. There's something to be said for natural light vs. what men brought into existence, he thinks, realizing at the same time that he's a lot more tired than he thought.

But it doesn't matter, because he'll have to be in the office in three hours and he's still no closer to finding anything in Joe's service record that raises alarm bells. He sighs, goes to the medicine cabinet and rummages around until he triumphantly pulls out a small bottle of Visine. He unscrews the cap, tips his head back and aims for his left eyeball, hissing when the first drop hits it, blinking, letting another drop fall and suddenly feeling a whole helluva lot better.

It's on to the other eye now, so he holds his eyelid open, squeezes the bottle, and his mind goes back to the active duty portion of Joe's record, the page that lists nothing but dates that Danny had to go over three times before he realized how they correlated to another page that was filled with deployment details equal to Steve's level of clearance.

There are no mission names, no mention of anything like Strawberry Fields or whatever other stupid codes the Navy dreams up for the dangerous situations it sends its SEAL teams into. The first eyedrop hits his right eyeball but this time he's ready for it and just squeezes the second one out, blinking rapidly as he rights his head and screws the top of the bottle back on.

He stops for a moment, mind racing along the dates. There's something about them that suddenly has the hair on the back of his neck standing on end and he frowns. He puts the Visine back into the medicine cabinet, swings its door shut. It catches, latches, leaves him looking at his own visage in its mirror.

From 1973 to 1977, Joe was stationed at Pearl Harbor.

He didn't come back to Hawaii until '79, stayed for only a year before shipping out to an undisclosed location for three years.

He spent the rest of the 1980s in Japan, then he's listed as Black Ops through '95. He was two years at Gitmo after that, and that just makes Danny shiver because like everyone else, he's heard the horror stories about what happens at the only American outpost in Cuba.

From 1998 through 2000, Joe stayed put at Coronado, which is where Danny assumes it was he trained Steve as a SEAL. Danny's brain stutters to a halt.

It's the first time since he began raking through Joe's record that he's even thought of Steve.

He beelines it out of his bathroom, through the small hallway that leads to his decently-sized living room and gets on his knees in front of the laptop still sitting on the coffee table with the flash drive sticking out the side of it.

He flips through the PDF documents until he finds the dates page again and goes from top to bottom, mentally aligning Joe's dates with Steve's life.

For three years before Steve was born, up through one year after, Joe was stationed right here in Hawaii.

Danny scans the dates.

Steve was sixteen when Judy supposedly died in the car accident. That would've been…he does a quick mental calculation…1992. His eyes go down the dates again.

Black Ops from '90 to '95. So Joe was somewhere secret for five years…and yet he'd said, or so Steve had told him, that he'd made a promise to John McGarrett to look after Steve after Judy's death.

Which means however covert that op was meant to be, Joe White was in contact with John McGarrett.

If he's to be believed.

Danny can feel a frown settling onto his forehead like a vice grip, just squeezing because he _knows_ there's something here.

Okay, Steve's next important date…he would've gone to Annapolis in 1994, after graduating high school. Joe was still Black Ops for another year past that. Steve graduated in '98, and Joe miraculously went from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Coronado in California the exact same year Steve hit Coronado to begin SEAL training.

Coincidence?

Danny snorts. He doesn't believe in that much coincidence.

He quickly directs his internet browser to the Navy SEALs' official website, somewhere he's visited more often than he's ever willing to admit, and pulls up the training page. Five to nine weeks for Stage 1. Three weeks for Stage 2. Stage 3, seven weeks. Stage 4, seven weeks. Same for Stage 5. He rubs a hand along the stubble on his jaw and chin as he clicks down the page.

Stage 6, SQT, SEAL Qualification Training. It doesn't list a period of time, but if Danny's mental math is accurate, it took anywhere from twenty-nine to thirty-three weeks for Steve reach the end of Stage 5. Somewhere between six and eight months, approximately. So in less than a year he would've been ready for SQT and Danny can't imagine it being more than three months to qualify a smart and capable guy like Steve for everything from weapons to demolition to survival and all the other bullet points the page's showing him.

So if Steve spent twelve months, more or less, in SEAL training, he would've been done some time between maybe February and June or July of 1999. Danny flips back to the PDF of Joe's service record dates page. Joe was at Coronado through January of 2000, well after Danny figures Steve would've been an active SEAL.

He looks at the next row of dates down.

Joe was in Japan next.

In fact, from February of 2000 through March of 2001 he's listed as officially being stationed in Japan. But starting in March 2001 through the time Danny first contacted him after McGarrett was thrown in jail for Jameson's murder, Joe is listed, once again, as being Black Ops.

Yet somehow Danny was able to contact the man with relative ease. Even a non-military guy like Danny knows you can't get in touch with men on a Black Ops mission.

And then Joe's discharged by the Navy for what they did to rescue Steve from North Korea, after a service record like that.

Danny leans back, still on his knees, until his butt touches his heels. He's been looking at these pages so long that the black Courier type-face numbers are starting to swim in front of his eyes. He blinks, digs the heels of his hands into his eye sockets hard enough to start seeing stars, then pulls them away.

Joe's been in Japan. He _has_ to have been in Japan on that last op classified as Black with no further info. Because how else could he have been protecting Judy McGarrett as Shelburne all that time?

Unless maybe Judy wasn't _in_ Japan all that time.

In which case maybe Joe was taking her from one location to another throughout the world to keep her out of Wo Fat's hands.

No, Jesus, just…_no_. There is no fucking way a housewife from Honolulu is important enough to the United States Navy to not only ensure her son is trained by one particular man who knows the boy's father, but to also be assigned to protection of the woman's life for _years_ the way it seems Joe was.

How the hell could Judy McGarrett warrant such dedicated service from a U.S. military organization?

And of all things, for the Navy to discharge Joe just like that, right when the whole thing about Shelburne was hitting the fan? The Shelburne that the Navy allowed Joe to protect for so long…or maybe forced him to?

Danny uses the front of his couch to pull himself up off the floor. He perches on the edge of it, now looking up to the large picture window with its beige curtains drawn. He's only been in this apartment for a month, and has yet to find a set of curtains that will completely block out the morning sun which now, as it stubbornly always does, turns the living room so light at six in the morning that it seems like it's blazing noon already.

He looks back down at the laptop as the multi-colored ribbon screensaver kicks in. He is, for a moment, mesmerized by the purple ribbon shooting from top-left to bottom-right, intersected by the yellow ribbon, bisected by the teal ribbon, wiped clean off the screen by the blue one.

Over and over again the ribbons meet, cut through each other, drape over each other and dissolve to black.

Joe was in Hawaii when Steve was born.

Joe knew John McGarrett.

Joe trained Steve at Coronado.

Danny leans his elbows on his thighs and puts his head in his hands, fingers tangling in his very mussed hair.

Joe was in Japan.

Joe was listed as Black Ops right up until he came to help Steve after Jameson's murder.

Joe helped Hiro Noshimuri fake his death and escape to Japan.

Joe knew Shelburne – Judy – was in Japan and took Steve to her.

Joe was _guarding_ her.

Guarding a housewife.

Impossible.

Danny thinks he might've stopped breathing. He takes his head out of his hands, hair wildly shooting in all directions, and looks back up at the curtains covering the picture window again.

No housewife is that important to the U.S. Navy.

Unless…

He starts breathing again. "She isn't just a housewife," he says to the empty room. He closes his eyes. "She isn't just a _house_wife."

Danny scrubs a hand down his face. He can feel that all the blood's drained out of his face. He was right. He was fucking _right_. Judith Elaine McGarrett isn't what, or maybe even _who_, his partner thinks she is.

He sinks back into the couch. All he can do is whisper, "Oh, my God."


	7. Chapter 7

Danny's waiting for them, and the second they enter the bullpen shoulder-to-shoulder he pounces, freshly showered and dressed in clean clothes, but looking just as wild-eyed as you might expect for someone who's been awake for twenty-eight hours straight.

"Okay, guys, we've got some serious digging to do," Danny says, herding them toward the touch-screen computer table.

Kono and Chin throw confused looks to Danny and then each other. "We got a new case?" Kono asks, but Danny shakes his head 'no' so hard she thinks it might just fall off his shoulders, then she gets even more confused when he starts nodding 'yes' instead.

He stops on the other side of the table from them, hands palm-flat on the tabletop, leaning forward to look first into Kono's eyes and then Chin's. "This is something we have to keep quiet," he says, his own voice low like he's afraid he'll be overheard.

"_Brah_, who would we be talking to about…whatever it is?" Kono asks.

Danny takes a deep breath. He slowly exhales. He blinks. He looks up at them, at his _ohana_, his teammates, _Steve's_ team, _Steve's_ _ohana_, and sucks in another breath…holds it for a second…and on the exhale says, "It's about Steve."

Chin's normally placid brow is graced by a slight frown. Kono's eyebrows knit together. "Steve?" she repeats.

"Well," Danny says, flapping his hand in the air, "about his mom, actually."

"How's that little family reunion going, by the way?" Chin asks. "Do you know he hasn't even called me since he and his mother returned from Japan? I'd _met_ the woman and still haven't been invited over to say hello."

Danny stares at Chin. And it's not only because usually the man never has any sound like petulance lacing his voice like he does right now. "You met her."

Chin nods. "Sure, back before she supposedly died. I was around for a few years, thanks to being partnered with John, but didn't really get to know Judy all that well."

And so Danny now has a new angle to attack things from, because if _anyone_ can pick up on something being wrong, anyone outside the McGarrett family, it's Chin. But for the moment, that'll have to wait.

"Something's not right about this whole thing," Danny begins, gesturing expansively to include, quite possibly, the entirety of the world. "And Mary Ann agrees with me."

"You mean about their mother not being dead?" Kono asks. When Danny nods, she continues, "And what about Steve? Does he agree?"

Danny swallows.

Chin picks up on the non-verbal cue. "You haven't mentioned it to him."

Danny slowly shakes his head. "I can't. Not when it's just my churning gut that I've got to go on. That and some suspicions."

Chin cocks his head. "But you say Mary Ann agrees with you that something's not right."

This time Danny nods. "We didn't get much of a chance to talk, and now Steve thinks all Mary wants to do is grope me," which of course gets weird looks from the cousins that Danny chooses to ignore, "but she feels that at least some of what Judy's been saying doesn't ring true. She says it feels like it's scripted."

"Rehearsing lines," Chin chimes in, and Danny nods. "You know, she was part of a theater group here in Honolulu in the years leading up to her death. Or…supposed death."

Danny's eyes widen. "Okay, that's a new thing to look into."

"I'm not sure I get it," Kono finally says. "I mean, what exactly is it that's off here? Just the fact that she's alive? Surely Steve's explained that, I mean, Joe and Steve's mom _had_ to have explained that to _him_, right?"

"According to Mary, Steve and their mom have, yes, but it's not sitting right with her and while Steve hasn't actually discussed _any_ of the details of the story with me as yet, what Mary said has ensured I will probably develop an ulcer by the time we're through."

"So you're looking into his mother without him knowing," Chin states.

"Yeah. Both his mom and Joe. And that's what I need your help on, because I've got something pretty suspicious here in Joe's service record."

Kono's eyes widen. "How the hell'd you get your hands on _this_?" she asks as Danny opens the folder that is his flash drive stuck into one of the table's many USB ports.

"Do _not_ ask me that, Kono. Plausible deniability."

She clamps her mouth shut and frowns down at the PDF file Danny's opening. He proceeds to explain Joe's timetable of service vs. major events in Steve's life. Fifteen minutes later the cousins are looking down at the page of dates that had been consuming Danny's mind, then looking up at Danny.

"You're right," Chin finally tells him, eyes meeting across the table. "There's absolutely no reason for the U.S. Navy to want to assign someone as high up in the ranks and as good at what he does as Joe, to protect and move around a Honolulu cop's housewife. Not unless there's something more to it."

"Exactly," Danny says, hands out with palms-up. "So I have a friend of mine in the FBI digging up what she can on Judy, but until I get something from her I need your help to check into whatever we can access ourselves."

"You've got a friend in the FBI?" Kono asks, making a surprised but approving face.

"More than one, but Mandy's the highest-level one. If anyone can dig up classified info, it's her."

"What do you want us to do?" Chin asks.

And just like that, Danny knows the team has his back. "We have to keep this away from McGarrett," Danny says, eyes pleading with them. "Because if I'm wrong…"

"Yeah, we got it," Kono assures him with a quick smile. Chin's single nod seals the deal.

"All right," Danny says, clapping his hands and then rubbing them together. "Chin, check into who was in that theater group with Judy. I want names, occupations, any info on every single one of them, no matter what role they played. I also want to know where they were based out of, and if there's anything in whatever building that was that can help us. I don't know, photos of the theater group, of performances, anything."

"I'm on it," Chin says, moving quickly to his office even as he whips out his cell phone.

"Kono, Steve's not going to be in today, I convinced him to take another day off with Mary and Judy. But I need to make sure every bit of what we've looked at here isn't accessible, that he has no way of knowing what we're doing." Kono nods. "Oh, and I need Chin to re-image my computer."

Kono grins. "You learn fast, Danny."

He winks at her. "Once you've got this all squared away, meet me in my office, because I've got another idea."

"You got it," Kono says, already busy deleting cache files as Danny removes his flash drive from the USB port.

Danny pockets the drive and retreats to his office where he can't use his computer, where he doesn't have anyone else he can call right now and where he sits down heavily in his chair, rubbing the sleep (or lack thereof) out of his eyes.

"Hey," comes Kono's soft voice as she enters his office and seats herself in one of the two chairs on the opposite side of his desk. "You okay?"

"No," he admits, shaking his head and smiling across at her tiredly. He sighs. "I feel like everything's falling apart."

She smiles sympathetically. "What's the next step with the whole custody thing?"

"I've got an appointment with my attorney at eleven," Danny says, looking at his watch to find it's just about nine. "It's going to get ugly." He sighs again, miserably. "But she's not leaving me any choice."

"I'm glad you're fighting it," Kono tells him. "Wouldn't be the same without you here, Danny."

He huffs out a laugh. "Not sick of me yet, huh?"

"Nah," she smiles. "More like dependent on you." This surprises Danny, and he's sure the look on his face says as much. "We all are," she explains with a flap of her hand that mirrors the same one he himself often uses. "But Steve especially, you know? That whole 'you're the backup' thing."

He swallows hard. This isn't what he needs to be focusing on right now, and so he just nods and takes a breath to calm himself. Leans forward, elbows on the desk. "Speaking of Steve, and the potential for this to be an even bigger clusterfuck than Jameson's betrayal, I've got a job for you, if you're up to it."

"Bring it," she says, leaning forward in a similar fashion, elbows and forearms resting on his desk.

"I want you digging into airport records, see if you can't lean on that contact you have in Homeland Security to check out passport usage, do whatever you can to find out where the hell Joe White is."

"What are you thinking?"

"Well," Danny says, leaning back and scrubbing a hand down his stubbly jaw, "I think it's kind of convenient that he led Steve to his mother's doorstep and then disappeared. I mean, the only thing Steve told me besides his mother was still alive when he called me from Tokyo was that Joe had just left him there and told him he had to do this on his own."

"So rather than sticking around and explaining himself, he's just gone, leaving Steve to deal with this alone."

Danny nods. "He doesn't want to have to answer questions, that much is pretty damn clear."

Kono purses her lips in thought, settling back into the chair. "And now that he's made the big reveal that Judy McGarrett's still alive, what would there still be to hide, is that what you're thinking?"

"Bang on," Danny says, the phrase he picked up from his ex-wife rolling off his tongue before he even realizes he's saying it. "If you can find out where Joe is, at least where the last place airline records or his passport officially puts him, maybe we can get a handle on what it is he's still doing out there AWOL after bringing a woman back from the dead."

Kono nods. "I'm on it. What are you going to do?"

"Unfortunately," Danny replies, "I've got to get ready for my meeting with the lawyer." He rubs his thumb and forefinger on his forehead. "God, I don't want to do this."

"But you don't want to be dragged away to the desert more."

"Yeah," he says with half a smile. "You got that right."

"I'll let you know as soon as I come up with anything," she tells him, getting to her feet. Then she bolts around the side of the desk and bends over to envelop him in a two-arm hug. "If there's anything we can do to help with the custody stuff, _brah_, you make sure you tell us, okay?"

He squeezes her back and nods. "I will."

Come to think of it, he muses as she flashes him a smile and walks back to her own office, it might not be a bad idea to put the cousins on looking into Stan's world. Maybe, just maybe, there's something in there Danny's attorney can use to help him fight them trying to take Grace away from him again.

But for right now, the cousins are on the case of Steve's mother, and Danny's got to sit down and get some dates and events from his own life written out…dates that involve everything from sleeping with a married woman to getting ready to leave with her and their daughter for New Jersey just abandoning his team…to the voice mail his whole team had heard showing what a pathetic loser he was where Rachel was concerned. This is not something he's looking forward to.

But he's got to fight. For Grace. For himself. For his team. For the life he's made here that he actually goddamn loves.

He steels himself as he pulls a pad of paper and a pen out of his desk. The only way he can get through this is to forget how much in love with Rachel Edwards he was less than a year ago.

Luckily, the fact that she's trying to rip his heart from his chest helps that out a _lot_.

He uncaps the pen and begins to write.


	8. Chapter 8

An hour into his meeting with the new attorney he's just emptied most of his savings account to pay the retainer on, the question…when Jameson Chang asks it…catches Danny off-guard. He looks up from the legal pad of his hand-written notes and blinks at the Chinese man's glasses-covered eyes.

"I'm sorry, what?" he says, sure he hasn't heard quite right.

"I asked, Detective Williams, whether a DNA test had been done on Mrs. Edwards' baby to establish paternity."

Danny blinks at him again. "I…I don't know. If Rachel did that, she sure didn't tell me."

Chang, someone who at least knows how to present himself as professional even in Hawaii, with his dark blue suit, white shirt and red-and-silver striped tie, taps the end of his pencil on the yellow legal pad lying in front of him on his desk, then puts the pen down altogether.

"So what you're telling me is that you and Mrs. Edwards had an affair, the details of which opened things up to the very real possibility that the child she was carrying may have been yours."

Danny squirms uncomfortably. God, he hates hearing what a two-faced bastard he is. Was. Whatever.

"And that initially, based purely on Mrs. Edwards' character and your belief that she was speaking the truth, you were prepared to leave Hawaii the very night of your partner's arrest for the murder of Governor Jameson, to return to New Jersey with Mrs. Edwards and your daughter, the minor named Grace Ann Williams."

Danny nods mutely, swallowing hard as images of him pulling up to see Chin carting Steve off in handcuffs flash before his eyes.

"And that, had it not been for the fact that your partner was indeed arrested and charged with Governor Jameson's murder, you would not even have been in this state in the aftermath of that. Am I correct?"

"Yes," Danny admits quietly. "But I did stay, because Steve needed my help and I just…" He scrubs a hand down his face, inhales deeply, exhales slowly. "I couldn't just leave him to rot in jail, okay?"

Chang nods. He's not judgmental, Danny'll give him that much, but _Christ_, this is worse than the time he had all five…yes, he had _five_…wisdom teeth pulled at once when he was thirteen.

"Four days after Mrs. Edwards and Grace departed for New Jersey, Mrs. Edwards phoned and advised you that she'd had a sonogram and the doctor determined the baby was too developed to have been the product of your affair. This led her to conclude that she'd been wrong about paternity, and decide to return to her husband, and to this state, with your daughter."

"Yes," Danny nods.

Chang leans back in his chair, eyeing Danny thoughtfully. This time, Danny doesn't just squirm, he fidgets. "What?" he finally says. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

The lawyer shrugs. "Quite honestly, Detective, given what you do for a living, I'm surprised you didn't demand a paternity test. After all, Mrs. Edwards had conveyed to her husband that she left him for you…although we don't really have proof of that other than her own assertion of same…and yet still left Hawaii that night even though you didn't join her, taking your daughter with her. Then suddenly a few days later, when you haven't shown up in New Jersey, she says the baby's not yours and returns a week-and-a-half later to make up with her husband."

Danny has to work to tamp down his disbelief at the accusations obvious in Chang's words, though his tone of voice hasn't wavered. "If Rachel says the baby was too far along to be mine, then it was," he replies. "Is."

Chang cocks his head at him. "Given the vehemence with which you have made it clear to me you do _not_ wish for your ex-wife to relocate with your daughter, are you prepared for exactly that to happen simply because you took her word? Because perhaps it was what you wanted to hear?"

"Wanted to hear?" Danny repeats incredulously, and suddenly can't keep still anymore. He bolts to his feet and starts pacing, knowing his hands are waving around like a madman's but unable to contain it. Any of it. "You think I _wanted_ to hear that I wasn't having another child? You think I _wanted_ the woman I was in love with all over again, having a second chance at our family with, you think I wanted her to tell me she was going back to _Stan_? How could you think that? What the hell have I said to make you think any of that made me _happy_?"

He stops in the middle of Chang's expansive office and deflates when the man shoots him a sympathetic look. "I'm not saying it made you happy. I'm saying you didn't want to leave Hawaii and you didn't want Grace far away from you. The price you were willing to pay for that was losing a second chance with a woman you were still in love with. A chance at having a second child with her."

Danny barely makes it back to the chair he's been occupying since first being shown in for the appointment. He collapses into it, leans forward and runs his hands through his hair. "There's no way that little boy can be mine," he says, more to himself than the attorney. He looks up and meets the man's eyes. "I was there when he was born. He was healthy, the right size for an eight-month gestation. If that baby had been mine, he'd have been born much smaller, she would've been only six months along at the most. He would've been a preemie."

"Very well," Chang says after a few thoughtful moments of silence. "But as your attorney, representing you in this case, I am going to put it on record that I advised you to file for a paternity test with the court prior to this case coming before a judge."

Danny flaps his hand at the man and nods tiredly, because…well, he's tired, for one. But also because it has never occurred to him to doubt Rachel's word as to how far along the baby was or who his father was. She'd loved him. Fallen in love with him again. Whatever. She wouldn't have broken his heart all over again by taking away a second child before he'd even gotten to hold him.

Would she?

Then Danny's eyes widen. Because the only reason he's sitting here right now in the office of one Jameson Chang, Attorney at Law, is because she _is_ breaking his heart all over again…by taking Grace to Las Vegas and not even having the decency to warn him before she files papers to make it happen.

If she can do it now…with Grace…what's to say she couldn't have done it a year ago with the baby? He doesn't want to believe it of her. Doesn't want to believe she would even _think_ of denying him his own flesh and blood, and yet _twice_ now she's been perfectly happy to take Grace thousands of miles away from him. Precedent, as an attorney might tell him, would suggest that what Danny wants to believe isn't aligning with history.

"Shit," he breathes as Chang is slowly organizing the papers he's been making notes on throughout their seventy minutes together. "You think she really could've lied about Stan being the baby's father?" he asks, hating how small his voice sounds.

Chang holds his hands out palms-up on his desk and shakes his head. "I don't know Mrs. Edwards personally. Therefore I can't really answer your question. But given all this other information you've shared with me, and given the fact that I have personally had many male clients to whom precisely that was done by the female involved, I must say it is a very real possibility."

Danny isn't sure his heart's beating anymore. He isn't even sure he's breathing. He's just _staring_ at the man.

Taking his glasses off and laying them on his desk, Chang leans forward, hands folding in front of him, elbows flush with the glass top of the desk. "Look, Detective, I'll be straight with you here. One of the things you cited as a secondary reason for your initial breakup with your ex-wife was money. While she was on maternity leave with Grace, you struggled financially, and even though I realize the primary excuse Rachel gave you was that she couldn't handle you being a police officer, the fact of the matter is that the ink on your divorce hadn't yet dried and she was already remarried to a wealthy man, and moving five thousand miles away from where the two of you lived."

Goddammit, Danny hates people summing up his crap-ass marriage with such painful finality. "What are you getting at?"

"I simply think," Chang replies, opening his drawer to fetch out a lens-cleaning cloth and beginning to use it on his glasses, "that we could make a very good case, whether the baby is truly Stanley Edwards' child or not, that your ex-wife got cold feet when she realized leaving him and going back to you would mean returning to two of the main reasons she left you to begin with: your work and your income."

His throat's closing up. He's feeling everything from anger to hope to hatred to bone-deep depression on top of weariness and worry and just about every other emotion under the sun.

"And," Chang continues after blowing a hot breath against one glasses lens, "once she realized that was the case, she rethought the matter and decided returning to Mr. Edwards was much more stable and less likely to result in her being left alone without very much money coming in should anything happen to you in the line of duty."

"You make her sound like a cold-hearted, calculating bitch!" Danny spat, instantly defensive of the woman he…the woman who…the woman who'd nearly destroyed him _twice_ already, and was trying for Third Time Lucky.

"Detective, I'm not trying to make her sound like one thing or another. I'm simply stating that she probably knew you would accept her word about the child's parentage, that you wouldn't question her decision to return to Oahu, especially given that she was returning your daughter as well. If we could prove that this child does _not_ belong to Stan Edwards, then you have a much, much better chance of winning your contestation than you have at this moment."

Danny could feel his face starting to crumble, feel his emotions getting the better of him. Just the idea…the _thought_ that little Stanley, Jr. could be _his_ and not Stan's, it…it made him…he didn't _know_ what it made him.

"You needn't make a decision about that right now, and our time together is over, anyway," Chang says as he finally finishes cleaning off his glasses and puts them back on. "But if you want me to have a case prepared in time for the court date, I can't give you any longer than a week to advise if you want me to file for a paternity test in the case of Stanley James Edwards, III, with the contestation conditional upon the results of said test. I will also tell you that such a filing, even if you're uncertain you want to know, would serve to delay the judge's decision on the case, leaving Mrs. Edwards unable to remove her from the state without the judge's express consent to do so before the contestation has been decided."

Danny can't…he just can't think about this anymore, talk about this anymore. "I'll let you know within a week," is all he can manage to get out of his mouth, accompanied by a weak flap of his hand.

He doesn't stop to shake his lawyer's hand. Doesn't say anything to his assistant as he passes her desk on the way out. In fact, Danny can't even...he just…he feels numb.

_Numb_.

Because what if Chang is right? What if Danny's wrong about the baby's gestation? What if…what if that baby is…

…is _his_?


	9. Chapter 9

Danny's more than just a little bit surprised when he looks up as he's automatically putting the Camaro into Park, and finds that he's sitting in the driveway of Casa McGarrett. _Why the fuck did I come here?_ is what he wants to say aloud but is startled out of being able to by his cell phone ringing. He looks over at where it's mounted on the dashboard…when he did do that, anyway?...and sees it's Chin calling.

"Yeah, Chin," he says tiredly after thumbing the call on.

"_Can you talk?"_ comes Chin's whispering voice through the air.

"That's like asking Steve if he can fire every automatic weapon ever made," Danny quips, pleased with himself for that one. "Of course I can talk. But apparently you can't? Why are you whispering?"

"_Where are you?"_ Chin asks.

"Steve's house, of all places, do _not_ ask me why, I have _no_ idea," Danny replies, shaking his head and looking back up at the house.

"_Notice anything missing?" _

Danny frowns. Looks straight ahead. Looks left. Looks right. "His truck," he says, when it hits him that the Camaro's the only vehicle in the driveway.

"_That's because it's here. _He's_ here, they all are. He brought Judy and Mary here, right now he's in his office with them."_

"Shit," Danny breathes, willing himself _not_ to bang his head on the steering wheel.

"_We had to tell him you'd gone to the appointment with your lawyer; he wouldn't let up wondering where you were."_

"Fine, fine," Danny says with a double-flap of his right hand. "You find anything out?"

"_Yeah,"_ Chin continues with his voice still-lowered. _"Lots, Danny, but I'm not really sure I want to discuss it from here."_

"Stupid sonofabitch couldn't stay away from the office one more day," Danny mutters, mind racing as fast as it can considering the layers of dirt he feels like he's buried beneath right now. "Look, can you meet me at Kamekona's, maybe, say you're running out for lunch for everyone? Then we'll make it like we ran into each other there and bring back food for all."

"_Yeah, okay, give me twenty minutes."_

"You got it," Danny says, then ends the call. He drums his fingers on the steering wheel, suddenly _very_ afraid to find out what the 'lots' Chin says he's found really is. Then his phone rings again. He recognizes the number and answers, "Grand Central Station, how may I direct your call?"

"_Dude. You finally give up fighting it and decide to get high, or what?"_

Danny shakes his head, although he's thinking right now at this very moment, getting high might be just what the doctor ordered. "What'cha got for me, Toast?"

"_Untraceable email with a twenty meg PDF attachment to our addy, _brah_."_

_Holy crap_, Danny thinks, _that was fast_. Mandy must've gotten working on what he asked her for the second they hung up with each other because, Jesus. Man, does he owe her bigtime. "Did you open the attachment?"

"_Hey, naw, man, not my thing. I put it on a flash drive. Come and get it."_

"Okay, look, I have to meet someone…hey, wait, can you drop it to me at Kamekona's shrimp truck? You know where it is, right?"

"_You seriously wantin' me to go outside?"_

"I'll make it worth your while."

"_Yeah?"_

"Yeah. Lunch is on me." Never mind that it'll probably drain the few pennies left in Danny's checking account, but whatever. He _needs_ that information.

"_Okay, _haole_ o' mine, I'll be there in ten."_

Danny ends the call, starts the Camaro and backs out of Steve's driveway. He's got two sets of information to go through now on the case he's initiated into the return of his partner's mother, and to top it all off, the nagging thought Chang stuck in his head that he now can't shake. The thought that the baby he watched being born might've been his all along.

He just…doesn't know what to do. Doesn't know where to go. Who to talk to. His family's out; they've hated Rachel since she left him and dragged Grace halfway around the world. Well, not _hated_, exactly, but if Danny even gives them a hint that she might've lied about her second child being his, they will – very _loudly_ – be on the phone to her in a nanosecond demanding the truth.

That would not end well.

So, crossing his entire family off his list, and Rachel, to whom he'd gone for solace after letting Matty get away, that leaves Chin, Kono and Steve. Chin's got a new wife, and an extended family still giving him grief stemming back to him losing his job with HPD. And Kono, well, he's somehow certain that if he let it slip that Rachel might've lied to him about the baby not being his, she'll probably ninja/kung-fu/jiu-jitsu her way into the Edwards mansion and lay Rachel out flat without so much as a word.

He can't help but smirk. There's something to be said for friends that you know have your back even when you're the dumbass who got yourself into the situation in the first place.

Friends who have your back. Friends like Steve, who right now has nearly every wish he's ever had coming true. Who Danny refuses to burden with this…any of this. He hadn't had anyone except maybe a few random old friends left over from when he'd left the island at sixteen, and that's why he'd needed Danny, Chin and Kono so much in the early days.

But now, Danny reckons, Steve's got his family and what's he need with a guy who's about to leave his team anyway burdening him, right?

Yeah. If only it were that easy for Danny to convince himself of that.

He knows…_knows_…Steve will be mad at him, act hurt and actually _be _hurt if he doesn't tell him what the lawyer suggested; if he just lets it lie and tries to deal with it alone. And maybe he could, you know? Maybe he _could_ handle this all alone if it wasn't for the additional fact that he's really _really_ sure McGarrett's going to get blindsided by something real bad if Danny doesn't do anything about it.

And as much as Danny would like to think he's man enough to handle his problems on his own, even potentially devastating ones, his track record already proves otherwise. A track record which Steve already knows, because Danny told him it was Matt who got him through the divorce.

He sighs as he nears the beach where Kamekona's shrimp truck is parked. Sighs and then just about chokes on his spit, because there's a text message from Chin that he obviously didn't hear come in, sitting on his Smartphone mocking him, telling him they're _all_ going to the shrimp truck. Which is confirmed when Danny looks up to see Steve, his mother and his sister all getting out of his truck, and Chin looking apologetic and Kono looking guilty getting out of Chin's Traverse.

"Jesus Motherfucking Christ on a _crutch_," Danny swears as he snags the last open spot three spaces from Chin.

Chin makes a beeline in his direction and is at the Camaro before Danny even fully gets out of it. "Lovely," Danny intones.

"Sorry, he insisted. Wants Kamekona to meet Judy," Chin says hurriedly. "Listen, you're right about all this," he whispers, leaning close as Danny shuts the door behind him. "Not only did the theater caretaker of the place the troupe she supposedly belonged to operated out of tell me there wasn't a single McGarrett in any of the troupe photos from the years in question, but he sent me PDFs of several plays and musicals they staged during those years and she isn't even on the _crew_ of any of them, let alone in the cast. I checked for her maiden name of Krupps but there's nothing, and nobody with the first name of Judy, Judith or Elaine."

"You're shitting me," Danny replies, eyes darting over Chin's shoulder to note that luckily, Steve's taken his mom directly to the shrimp truck, with Kono on their six, for which he feels he at _least_ owes her a hug. "Didn't John ever go see her plays or whatever? Ever want to attend? Wouldn't he have known if she was lying about going to play practice or whatever they did?"

"No," Chin continues in that same quiet voice. "John McGarrett never did much _but _police work and hanging out with me on occasion, and attending Steve's games. I got the idea things in his marriage weren't all they were cracked up to be, but he never really told me much."

Danny shakes his head. "Well, that's no surprise," he says bitterly. "_Most _marriages aren't what they're cracked up to be." He looks up to find the McGarretts and Kono still at the truck. "What about Kono, she get anything?"

Chin nods. "She discovered that Joe never left Japan, Danny. At least, not by any official transport. The last time his passport registered at any border was when he and Steve went there together. There's no record of him taking any localized flights in Japan, and Kono even checked with a good number of the marinas. None of them report seeing a man who resembled Joe reserving or being a passenger on a boat."

"Wait," Danny says, thankful to have his mind on something other than his own crap. "Wait a minute. You're telling me Joe took Steve to Japan, left him to find his mother inside the safehouse alone, and then _stayed_ in Japan when Steve brought her back to Hawaii."

Chin nods. "Unless he took a Navy or Air Force transport out, but with him being discharged, why would they let him use a military transport?"

"Unless…" Danny snaps his fingers. "Unless he wasn't really discharged."

"He was. Steve said he saw the order himself."

"What if it was a cover-up?"

Chin looks like the light bulb just went on over his head. "You mean what if Joe really _wasn't _discharged, and it was all for show."

Danny nods. "We're supposed to believe that. All of us, Steve included. Not to mention the fact that we're also supposed to believe Wo Fat allowed himself to be captured in Japan and brought back here to Hawaii. From what Steve told us all, he didn't even put up a fight."

"Steve says Wo Fat figured he was his best defense against the Yakuza."

Danny stares into his friend's and coworker's eyes for a moment. "I need to talk to Wo Fat."

"Jesus, Danny, be _careful_," Chin says, eyes growing large and round. "You don't know _what_ that man is capable of."

"But what if it wasn't that, Chin? What if those goons who chased them all through the jungle weren't Yakuza?"

"But Adam Noshimuri was there when Steve and Wo Fat came in, it took _us _to make him stand down, keep him from killing Wo Fat," Chin replies with a frown. "He kept apologizing to Kono for being part of…holy shit," he continues, face clearing, eyes boring into Danny's. "You're saying he wasn't there to _kill_ Wo Fat, he was—"

"—there to get the truth out of him," Danny finishes with a nod. "Or at the very least to help keep up the pretense that it _was _the Yakuza after Wo Fat, for Steve's benefit. I gotta tell you, I don't think Wo Fat killed Hiro Noshimuri. I think Hiro was killed because he knew the truth about Shelburne, about Steve's mom," he states as it all starts becoming way too crystal clear for comfort.

"You think Joe did it and pinned it on Wo Fat so Steve would get distracted by him and stop looking for Shelburne."

Danny nods. "And don't you think it's odd that after twenty years of safeguarding Judy, suddenly Joe doesn't care where she goes? Who she goes with? All of a sudden she can just come back home like the last two decades haven't happened?"

Chin makes a face that looks suspiciously like fear. "Danny, what the hell is going on here?"

Danny rubs a hand down his cheeks and scratches at his chin. "Jesus fuck, I don't…this is so fucking complicated. I can't…" Danny lets his voice trail off and runs a hand through his hair. Then suddenly he has a bright smile plastered on and calls over Chin's shoulder, "Hey, partner!"

By the time Steve reaches Chin and Danny, Chin's managed to school his own countenance back into its normal placid look. There are smiles and pleasantries exchanged and all is well as they start heading back toward the picnic table where Mary, Kono and Judy are waiting for their orders.

Except Danny's life is _never_ that easy, right? So of course at that very moment a half-stoned geek has to come running across the parking lot calling Danny's name.

Toast. Fuck. He forgot Toast was coming with that file from Mandy.

How the _hell_ is he going to explain this to Steve?


	10. Chapter 10

"Hey," Steve says to Toast as the man approaches the trio. "What're you doing here?"

"Special Delivery," Toast says, whipping a flash drive out of his pocket and handing it to Danny. "Now for the payoff, _brah_."

"What is that?" Steve asks, mild curiosity showing on his face.

Chin looks at Danny.

Danny bites his lip. "Nothing you need to worry about," he finally says, waving McGarrett's question away. "Come on, Toast, order up and I'll foot the bill."

"Nothing?" Steve repeats in the second or two it takes for him to realize Danny and Toast are already headed toward the shrimp truck. "What—?"

"Steve," Chin says, grabbing his arm, and Danny thinks now maybe he owes Chin a hug, too, when he says, "let it go, it's personal, okay?"

"Personal?" Steve repeats. "Personal that you know about but I can't?"

Danny steals a glance up and yep, there's that face again, that same one from the car when he'd had to take his 'personal' phone call from Chang.

Shit.

The hurt look.

Danny hands Kamekona a twenty and heads back to where Steve now has his arms folded over his chest and has put on his best combo of Aneurism Face, Constipated Ferret Face and maybe a dash of But-You-Are-MY-Partner Face thrown in for good measure.

"It's all right, Chin," Danny says, feeling his heart trying to pound its way through his chest, "I got this."

Chin nods almost imperceptibly, leaving Danny and Steve standing not-quite-far-enough-for-Danny's-liking away from Kamekona, Toast and the picnic table where Mary's giving him a wide-eyed look and Judy's watching them intently. To Kono's credit, she engages Judy in conversation which at least gets her eyes off him as he pulls Steve away by his forearm and slots them between two parked SUVs.

"Danny, what the hell's going on?" Steve asks with that You're-Leaving-Me-Out-Of-Something-Important tone to his voice.

"Look, it's nothing you need to hear about while you've got your mom and your sister over there waiting for you, okay?" Danny says hurriedly, and dammit, he can't make himself meet Steve's eyes.

"Hey," Steve says, reaching out and laying a hand on Danny's shoulder. "Danny, what's going on? Is this about the custody battle?"

Danny sees his out and takes it.

"Yes, okay? It's just…it's just some background digging I did, and it was passed to me through Toast's and my ghost email we used back on that case where I first met him. That's it, okay? Nothing to worry about."

Steve studies him. Squeezes his shoulder harder than is strictly necessary. Danny finally looks up. Nope. Steve doesn't believe him. Or at least, doesn't believe he's getting the whole truth.

Jesus, Danny's usually a better liar than this. "Look," he says, deflating, "I haven't slept much the last coupla days, I'm fighting to get my lawyer as much info as I can in almost no time and I just…" Danny really _does_ deflate, sagging back into the side of the SUV behind him, letting Steve's hand slip off his shoulder. "I'm tired, Steve, okay?"

"I want to help," Steve tells him, so earnestly it kind of breaks Danny's heart a little to think he might soon have intel in his hands that shatters Steve's existence completely. "I'm your best friend, Danno, _talk_ to me."

And the next time Danny meets his eyes, he can't help but _want_ to. Steve's been there for him, he's been there for Steve. He abandoned going to Jersey with Rachel and _Grace_ because of Steve. Steve was there when Grace was kidnapped. Danny was there when Nick shot up Steve's house. Steve was there in the aftermath of Matty fleeing the country, even going so far as to sit solidly right next to Danny on the couch when he'd finally called to tell his folks what had happened.

Now Danny's in a fight he may not be able to win. A fight that, if lost, will remove him from the best friends he's had since he left New Jersey and maybe even before then. Steve, and Chin, and Kono. All this around him, this sun and blue sky, the stupid sand, Kamekona and his wacky shrimp dishes.

"Over that beer," is what comes out of Danny's mouth.

Steve looks confused for a second, then his eyes clear. "The just you and me one."

Danny nods and peers around the end of the SUV to find that Toast, Kamekona and Chin are now sitting _with_ Kono, Mary and Judy at the picnic table, all of them laughing at some tale or other the big guy's weaving, shrimp apron and all.

Steve's still looking at Danny when he returns his gaze to his partner's, looking ten kinds of worried and fuck, that's not what Danny wants. "Don't go back to the office," Steve says, the same worry lacing his voice. "Come back to my place, or at the very least go back to yours. You need to sleep, Danny, you look like three miles of bad road."

"What, not twelve?" Danny asks.

"Not yet, but you're getting there."

Danny's mind races. He certainly isn't going over to Steve's house. But maybe going back to his own apartment isn't such a bad idea. At the very least, whatever Mandy sent him won't be in HQ where Steve can possibly find it. And maybe a quick nap is just what the doctor ordered.

"All right. After lunch I'll head home, okay?" Danny says. "Happy, Mother Hen?"

Steve half-smiles at him. "Yeah, now let's go eat. Cold shrimp is disgusting."

"Most of what Kamekona _makes_ is disgusting."

Steve laughs.

Danny can't quite bring himself to.

And now he's got to sit down at a table with a woman he knows isn't all she's cracked up to be. The look he gets from Mary Ann as Kamekona gets up to make room for the partners is almost more than he can take at this point.

But he gets through half a container of plain old Shrimp Scampi before making his excuses and getting a knowing look from Kono as he heads for his car. He hears Steve telling Chin and Kono that he made Danny go home because he's so exhausted, and hears Judy ask something in response, which Steve answers, but he doesn't know what either of them said.

And at this point, doesn't care. Because the more he looked at Judy McGarrett, the more his gut twisted until he was sure his Scampi was going to be all over the beach in a matter of seconds if he hadn't gotten up and left.

When he gets back to his place at long last, some twenty minutes later, Danny's seriously doubting whether he can make it into the apartment. But he does, and manages to toe his shoes off before faceplanting on the nice, soft, non-pull-out couch in his living room.

He doesn't even lock the door behind him.

Which is why, he tells himself some indeterminate amount of time later, waking with the distinct impression that someone's got eyes on him, there is a large, looming figure standing between his couch and his front door. A large looming figure that at first, as he blearily rubs sleep out of his eyes, he thinks might just be the devil himself come to cart him to Hell for all his misdeeds, but which, it turns out in the end, is none other than "Steven." Which, you know, not much difference between the two, really, at times with his whole "You _are_ the backup" thing.

"Daniel," Steve replies with his formal voice in use.

"Why are you in my apartment?"

"Because I wanted to make sure you were all right and so I took Mom and Mary home and came right over only to find that you, a cop all the criminals on this island know the name and face of, were laying in a very passed-out state on the couch just inside your apartment door."

"I know where I'm laying, I'm the one laying here!" he protests, sitting up and running a hand through his hair.

"Just inside your _open_ apartment door," Steve hisses, eyes narrowing. "What the hell, D? Did you not sleep at _all_ last night?"

Danny opens his mouth. Shuts it. He fell asleep without even closing his door? What the—? "Why are you here, McGarrett? Don't you have your mother to spend some time with?"

Okay, that came out sounding petulant. Danny sighs.

"Yeah. But I also have a friend who needs me. So I'm here. Mom'll be there when I get back. Spill, Danny," he says, sitting down right next to him, closer than he needs to be like he almost always is.

"Can I at least _pee_ first?" Danny asks, hiking himself up off the couch and heading down the hall. "Christ. Beer, McGarrett."

"Yes, sir," he hears Steve reply, so he flips him off as he heads into the bathroom, hoping Steve sees it.

And while he's in the john he whips both flash drives out of his left pocket, looks wildly around, then opens his medicine cabinet and the box of Barbie band-aids therein. Quickly he stuffs both of them in amongst the bandages, closes the box, and puts it back, quietly shutting the medicine cabinet door.

Only then does he get down to the business of relieving his bladder.

He hears some clanking out in the hall. Figures Steve would actually try to come back here, like Danny's incapable of taking a leak without falling in or something. He sighs, shakes his head, washes his hands and is drying them when the expected _tap-tap-tap_ comes on the door.

Danny whips it open, startling Steve which, hey. He startled a SEAL, that's pretty damn good. "You want to hold it for me next time, Steve-o?" Danny asks.

Oh, the myriad of faces that flit across that mug make even Danny laugh, and eventually Steve joins him and then they go and sit on the couch, comfortably leaning back, sipping on their beers and not saying a word.

And then Steve has to go and speak.

"So," is what he says, and really, leaning forward to put his beer on the coffee table, you know, that isn't such a big deal.

Except that Danny's laptop is sitting on the coffee table.

And Danny's notebook is sitting right next to it.

And the notebook is flipped open.

And Danny's writing is on it.

And the first thing written at the top is Steve's DOB.

Danny freezes when he realizes Steve's looking right at it.

Feels like he's going to throw up when Steve leans forward even further to get a better look.

And thinks maybe he'll use his own gun to put himself out of his misery when Steve turns his face back to Danny looking every kind of suspicious that there is.

Then Steve picks up the notebook and gets a better look at the scribbling.

Steve is quiet for a moment. Once again, Danny is not breathing. This cannot be good for his health.

Steve looks at him. Concern? Pain? Confusion? What-the-fuckery? Yes, sir, all present in the eyes of one Lieutenant Commander, sir.

"Danno?" Steve looks back down at the notebook, then back up at his partner. "What is all this?"

Danny has a really bad feeling his life just went from bad to worse.


	11. Chapter 11

Okay. Maybe there's a painless way outta this.

Maybe.

Probably not.

Danny puts his own beer down on the coffee table, then digs the heels of both hands into his eye sockets, wishing he could somehow squish his own brain into nonexistence this way, right here and right now. He sighs – dramatically by even _his_ standards – and lets his hands drop to his lap.

When he meets Steve's eyes, he's seeing the one thing he was afraid of seeing when he first got that goddamn feeling in his gut about Judy McGarrett. He's seeing betrayal. Dammit. Dammit, he needs to come clean. He needs to tell Steve what they're doing. He _has_ to.

Because of course, what _else_ would Steve feel? Here are Danny, Chin and Kono going behind his back just because they don't want to raise the suspicion, they don't want to hurt Steve unnecessarily. He's used to people he cares about, people he trusts, fucking him over. Lying to him. Concealing things from him. For Christ's sake, the situation at hand – his _mother_ – is just one in a long line of examples.

"I was doing some thinking, okay?" is what Danny gives him. He hates himself for it.

Steve's eyes, the set of his jaw, tells Danny it isn't enough. He looks back down at the notebook in his hand. "My Date of Birth," he says, eyes scanning down. "A bunch of other scribbled dates between now and then." He pauses, a slight frown creasing his forehead. "This would've been the year I graduated high school and started at Annapolis," he says, pointing to one line. "And this was the year I graduated Annapolis and went directly into SEAL training."

Danny swallows. There's got to be a way out of this. There's _got_ to.

"This date range here, the year after I went to SEAL training, what's this for?" Steve asks. "Danny, tell me what you were doing. Are you investigating me or something? Some IA thing?"

"What?" Danny asks, truly surprised. "No. There's no IA thing, and I'm not investigating you, all right?" Steve tosses the notebook into Danny's lap as he gets to his feet, face set hard as stone. Danny lets the notebook fall to the floor as he, too, rises from the couch. "It's nothing bad, okay? I was just…I just wanted to…look, I was just trying to figure some stuff out, all right?"

"Figure some stuff out?" Steve asks, and Danny _knows_ that look, one he's seen directed at uncooperative suspects too many times _not_ to know it. "Figure _what_ out, exactly? Why would you be thinking about the various highlights of my life starting with my DOB? What the hell do you care when I went to Annapolis or when I became a SEAL? What's this have to do with your child custody case?"

Danny blinks in confusion. Do _what_ now? "You're not making any sense. This hasn't got _anything_ to do with the case."

"Well, you're not sleeping because of what you're going through with Grace, isn't that right? Or is that just what you wanted me to believe? Danny, I'm only going to ask you one. More. Time. Why do you have all this stuff on me written down right next to your laptop? You want me to fire it up and see what you're hiding from me?"

"I'm not hiding _anything_, McGarrett, _Jesus_. What the hell's the matter with you?"

Okay. That was a big, fat lie. One the size of a whale, maybe. Or the size of the North American continent, actually. Shit, he can't make his brain come up with— "I was looking into Joe, okay?"

Now it's Steve's turn to blink. "Joe? Joe _White_?"

"You know any other Joe that we both know other than my pop, a man you _don't_ actually know?"

"If you were looking into Joe, which I want to know _why_, by the way, what the hell were you writing down dates in _my life_ for?"

Steve's voice has risen enough decibels that Danny's pretty sure his neighbors can hear the man and shit, oh, shit, this is _so_ not going well.

"Steve, look, just—I was trying to figure out where he was with your mother from the time you were sixteen on, all right? I just wrote down your DOB to glance up at for my calculations, I was trying to determine what had really happened, why your mother faked her death and what Joe had to do with it."

Well. Not a complete lie. Just not the whole truth. Danny can live with that. For now.

But Steve's not looking like _he_ can. "If you want to know something about Joe or my mother or my _family_, why don't you ask me? What the hell do you know about where Joe has or hasn't been, anyway? You can't get your hands on his personnel file, not as a civilian."

And Danny is very proud of the fact that he doesn't let go any tells like flinching that'll make Steve realize he actually _does_ have Joe's file. "It was stupid, just me being an idiot. I couldn't sleep last night, I wanted to _not_ think about my ex-wife screwing me over six ways from Sunday and so I thought about _you_ instead. There. Happy?"

Steve's shaking his head. No. Not happy, then. Danny sighs and wonders when sighing became nearly as common as breathing for him.

"If you want to know the truth about why she's been hiding out for two decades, just _ask_ me, Danny. I'll _tell_ you, I'll tell you everything you want to know, everything Mom told me."

Danny looks him square in the eye and knows it's a mistake before he even says the words, but they won't stop tumbling out of his mouth for nothing and oh, fuck, because, "And how do you know _she_ told _you_ the truth?"

Steve actually flinches back as though reeling from a punch. His face registers complete shock. "What?" he breathes. "What did you just say?"

"I…" Danny's voice trails off. He scrubs a hand down his cheeks. "Steve, I didn't—"

"Didn't _what_, Danny?" Oh, God. That's anger. Pure, unadulterated _anger_. "Didn't just call my mother a _liar_? Didn't just question whether I was smart enough to _know_ if she was lying to me?"

Steve stalks toward him and for the first time since Danny met the man he actually feels a ripple of fear stilt through his chest. But he holds his ground, even when Steve stops toe-to-toe with him, towering over him, glowering at him and looking like he's just about to wrap his hand around Danny's neck and put him out of both of their misery.

Suddenly Steve's hands are digging into Danny's pants pockets. Danny's split-second of fear turns into outrage, and he hauls back and right-hooks McGarrett's jaw. Steve mirrors the move and both men wind up several steps away from each other nursing their bruised jaws.

"What the _fuck_, McGarrett?" Danny practically screeches, hands thrown up in the air like Steve really _has_ lost his mind.

"Where's that flash drive Toast gave you?" Steve asks.

Oh, shit. _That's_ why he's gone for Danny's pockets.

"I want to know what's on it. What did he get for you? Something _else_ about me? Joe's Navy file, maybe? Something about my family? My _family_, Danny!" Now _Steve_ is the one with windmilling hands who's pacing back and forth in the living room.

"That flash drive is exactly what I told you it was," Danny says through clenched teeth because lie, lie, lie. "It's something for _my_ case. _My_ case, Steve, remember? The one that's probably going to take me off this rock _for good_, that case?"

The look on Steve's face doesn't change one bit. "You think my mother's lying to me," he says. "And that I'm too stupid to realize it."

Danny levels his gaze right back at him. "No. I don't think you're stupid. I think you're so fucking happy to have her back that maybe you're just…" Danny fans his hands out in front of him. He just doesn't know how to say it without insulting Steve, his mother, the Navy, his life in general or every ancestor clear back to the ones that swam in the ocean.

"You got Chin and Kono on this, too?" Steve asks, and Danny thinks maybe he wasn't so good at hiding his tells this time because Steve says, "Some fucking _ohana_ you are."

"Steve, look, I'm sorry, it's just with this whole thing about Las Vegas—"

"You know what?" Steve seethes, making it to the front door in two long strides and opening it wide. "If you think you can undermine my authority within my own task force, if you think I'm not smart enough to know whether or not my mother is lying to me…if _you_," he says, jabbing his finger in the air in Danny's direction, "are so fucking miserable that you want to do whatever you can to destroy _my_ happiness while yours is falling to pieces around you, then you can fucking _go_ to Las Vegas and have a nice fucking _life_, _Danno_."

Sarcasm drips off the last word, echoing around the living room as Steve's eyes bore into his. Then he turns to go. When next he speaks, not even so much as looking over his shoulder, his voice sounds more broken than Danny's ever heard. "I trusted you." The quiet words reverberate as loudly as the slam of the door when Steve walks out.

That numb feeling is back.

And cold.

Numb and cold.

Cold and numb.

What the _hell_ had just happened?

_Exactly what you were afraid would happen_, his inner voice tells him.

Danny's legs give out. Luckily the couch is there to catch him. Sort of.

He slides off the edge of it onto the floor, on his knees, facing his powered-down laptop. He braces himself with his hands on the edge of the coffee table, leans forward and just lets his head hang between his arms.

Danny's right about Judy. He _knows_ he is.

And Mary knows something's wrong, too.

Chin and Kono believe his suspicions enough that they agreed to help without a word to their boss.

So Danny _knows_ he's right about something _not_ being right.

Only he's just lost the trust of the man he's been desperately trying to spare from further heartache. Lost him because Steve thinks Danny just did what he's trying to _prevent_ from happening. He thinks Danny's sabotaging him…betraying him…trying to turn both his team and his blood relatives against him. Trying to destroy the happiness Steve's entire being has been yearning for since the cop showed up on his doorstep to tell them his mother was dead.

Danny's head sinks lower between his arms. It's too much. It's all just too much.

The shit of it is that he doesn't even have any tears left to cry.


	12. Chapter 12

He takes a few ragged breaths, head hanging between his arms, arms that are barely supporting his weight.

He's hurt Steve. And he's put Chin and Kono into the position where they, by default, are hurting Steve, too.

And he _can't_. No matter what Steve's mom is or isn't, Danny can't _live_ with the knowledge that the last thing he does on this island is tear Five-0 apart. Is tear _Steve_ apart. He _can't_ _do_ that. If for no other reason than he's damn well got his foot stuck in the door on this stupid hunk of lava rock and fucking _cares_.

Suddenly Danny's on his feet, to his front door and whipping it open. Maybe Steve hasn't left yet, maybe he's sitting in his truck still, maybe—

Maybe he's standing there right outside Danny's apartment door with his butt leaning against the wall, bent forward with his hands on his thighs looking like he's either going to pass out or puke.

Danny blinks.

Steve looks up at him, eyes full of unshed tears.

Reaching out like he's trying to not to spook an injured, dangerous and possibly rabid animal, Danny makes to grab Steve's forearm but lets his hand drop back to his side instead.

"I didn't want to believe it," Steve whispers, slowly righting himself, breathing like he's just finished a five hundred yard sprint.

"Believe what?" Danny asks, thinking, _sure_, that Steve's talking about Danny betraying him.

Steve looks up to the sky as though begging for divine intervention, but of course, none comes. "I didn't want to believe she wasn't everything she was cracked up to be," is how he answers.

Danny's jaw drops.

"I knew deep down..." Steve's voice trails off, unable to complete the sentence or the thought.

So Steve _has_ been doubting the story of his mother. The anger he felt before _was_ probably largely toward Danny for diving into his personal life, into his mother, all without telling him and dragging Kono and Chin with him, to boot. But that's only part of it, and the look on Steve's face confirms it. Steve's been in denial, hanging on for as long as he can to the Holy Grail because he _does_ know something's wrong, but he wants nothing more than to keep what it seemed he'd been handed on a silver platter. He's not been willing to let it become anything other than what he desperately wants it to be.

Until his best friend shoves it at him like a hot poker right through the solar plexus.

Relief, just pure _relief_ flows through Danny head to toe. "C'mere," he says, grabbing and tugging on his partner's arm.

They move inside the door and Danny finally lets go of Steve, closing the door behind them and turning to face him. "Look, I didn't do this to hurt you. I did it to _not_ hurt you. It was just a gut feeling, Steve, and one that I wasn't about to voice without _something_ in the way of evidence to back it up. I swear, once I got that evidence, I was going to sit you down, pull Kono and Chin in, and talk it all through with you."

Steve swallows, looking more than just a little shaky. "And then what?" he asks.

"Then I was going to let you decide what you did or did not want to do about it," Danny says, and it feels so fucking good to just tell the _truth_. "I've been lying to you, and all I can do is apologize. But right here and now, I'm going to lay it all out, okay? I don't know much, still, but I do know that something's not right and I think I've got enough to prove at least that much."

Steve takes a deep breath. "Okay," he finally says, dropping back onto the couch and picking up his beer like the two of them hadn't just had the mother of all blowouts. "I'm sorry," are Steve's next words. He looks up through his eyelashes at Danny, then looks away, shaking his head. "What's it say when you trust your partner and team of two years more than you trust the woman who gave birth to you?"

Danny swallows 'cause yeah, that means a whole _helluva_ lot. Too much, too many emotions near the surface and so he deflects with, "It says you maybe did a pretty good job of picking your friends after all."

Steve smiles a little sardonically and Danny's eyes crinkle at the edges.

"We can't even break up like normal people," Danny quips, and that gets a chuckle and a shaking head from Steve and all at once Danny feels like maybe he _can_ do this, all of it. He can face Rachel down in court, he can fight for the right to keep Grace in one place instead of uprooting her every couple of years and if it turns out that baby really is his, then he'll have another little person to love and cherish the way he does Grace. If it's not, then nothing will be any different than it is now.

Unless he loses.

Which he might.

Probably will.

His smile fades.

"You tell me what you're thinking about my mom," Steve says, eyeing his beer for a moment and then turning his face up to look at Danny, "everything you know, all your suspicions, and then you tell me about this court case with Rachel." Danny looks down, picks up his notebook from the floor, puffs out a breath of air. "Okay?" Steve presses.

Danny nods. "Okay."

"Okay," Steve confirms.

Running a hand through his hair, Danny says, "Be right back," and makes his way to the bathroom, where he fishes the two flash drives out of the box of Barbie band-aids, looks at them in the palm of his hand for a moment and then takes a deep breath so he can tell Steve the final thing that might just make him lose the man's friendship for good. He's not lying to his partner anymore. Not for anything or anyone.

"There's one more thing you're going to hate me for," he says upon reentering the living room, and Steve looks at him without any sense of betrayal or suspicion or anything else. As though he's worn thin where the emotions are concerned, too, and that's saying something. It's telling Danny that yeah, Steve really _has_ been wondering about the real story where his mom's concerned, and it's been eating him up inside as bad as it and the court case have been gnawing at Danny.

Steve just waves his hand, shakes his head, takes a pull on his beer.

"I have two flash drives. The one Toast delivered at Kamekona's shrimp truck is information from a contact of mine in the FBI, related to your mother. Obviously I haven't seen it yet since I came home from lunch and passed out with my door wide open."

Steve's eyes widen. He sets the beer down on the table as Danny hands him Toast's flash drive.

"The other one," Danny says as he palms it and stares at it, _oh, God, here goes nothing_, "contains Joe's U.S. Navy personnel file at your level of clearance."

Danny feels like a complete coward as he avoids looking at Steve for a few long seconds. Then he mans up and does so when McGarrett asks, "How'd you get that?"

Danny tosses the drive on the table, sits down on the couch and leans back, pinching the bridge of his nose. "When you were in North Korea, in the short time it took for us to all decide we were coming after you, I managed to get my hands on some Top Secret information about Wo Fat's dealings in that country." He sighs – yet again – and continues. "I accidentally stumbled across the secret URL you use to gain access to information at your level of authorization, including the pass phrase that changes every couple of weeks." Danny mans up and looks directly at Steve. "I ghosted it so I could keep up on it." Danny shakes his head. "I just..." He swallows. _Damn._

Steve's faces changes…morphs right in front of him…and Danny swallows as he looks away. "I didn't know if we were ever going to see you again. I did what I had to do to make sure they couldn't somehow bury your disappearance if we didn't find you. I couldn't let that happen."

Not a _sound_ from Steve.

Danny's hand falls to his side and his head rolls to the right, never leaving the back of the couch, so he can look directly at his partner, who's a little stony-faced at the moment. "I used your login and password to get access to Joe's record, okay? There. That's it. I've done something blatantly illegal, I've compromised your trust in me, and you will hate me for the rest of my life because me telling you this probably just got you court-martialed or maybe lined up in front of a firing squad."

Seconds. Minutes. Hours. Days. No concept of how much time is or isn't passing in the ensuing silence because Steve isn't speaking and Danny's all out of words, possibly for the first time in his life, and he's just left it up to Fate…and to Steve…to decide if it matters whether or not Danny has to go to Las Vegas.

But Steve just picks up the flash drive containing Joe's file and puts it into one of the many pockets on his cargo pants. He clears his throat. "I'll change my password as soon as I'm on a secure line. Don't ever do that again, Danny." He stops, eyes boring holes into Danny's skull and Danny thinks maybe this is the first time he's ever seen the _real_ BAMF Navy SEAL come out head to toe in all his military-trained, frighteningly secretive and someone-you-do-not-want-to-fuck-with glory. "It can't _ever_ happen again. Do you get my meaning?"

Danny swallows, barely managing to keep it from being a gulp. He nods, but it's not enough for Steve, who has light glinting in his eyes like they're full of razor-sharp knives just waiting to do Danny in. "Yeah, yes, I get it. I'll forget I ever knew it."

"And you'll turn the rest of whatever Top Secret information you found over to me immediately," Steve continues. "_All_ of it."

Danny nods, then remembers Steve expects words, and says, "Yes. I have it stashed here in my bedroom. I'll get it now." And he does, pulling yet _another_ flash drive out of the toe of an old pair of sneakers stashed in a shoebox on the top shelf of his bedroom closet.

Once Danny returns to the living room and hands the final drive to Steve, he watches as Steve looks like he's giving himself a stern talking-to while stuffing the final two flash drives into the same pocket as he did the first. Steve stands. He looks across the coffee table at Danny.

"Do you get that I would have been well within my rights to kill you without question for what you've told me you did?" Steve asks. He looks like he's about to explode. "Do you _get_ the only reason I _didn't_?"

Same hard, cold voice, and yet the eyes have softened like he realizes _why _Danny did it, but at the same time can't ignore that fact that he did, in fact, completely compromise a Lieutenant Commander privy to a whole hell of a lot of secrets. This time, Danny _does_ gulp. "Yeah, I think I do now. I just…" Danny flaps a hand ineffectually, lets it drop back to his side.

"There are real consequences to what you did, Danny, for both of us," Steve says. "I can only let it go once. And if anyone ever discovers that I did…_please_ tell me you understand me here."

"I do." He meets Steve's gaze. "It will never happen again."

Steve stares at him for a few moments longer, then nods once like he's settled whatever argument was going on inside his own head. "Not another word about it." He takes a deep breath. "Now tell me what you know about my mother, and then tell me what your attorney said about the case. Then we're going back to HQ and we're going to get all four of us together and we're going to figure out what to do."

Danny feels another huge wave of relief wash over him. But then he realizes that Steve's voice isn't quite right, and he looks at him as Steve sinks back down onto the couch. "I really hope…" Danny starts, but can't bring himself to finish. "I want to be wrong, Steve."

"Whatever the truth is, I can deal with it," Steve says defensively, like he's about two shakes away from just getting up and going.

"I know you can," Danny replies as he joins him on the couch and turns to face him just a little. "Only one thing, partner." That, at least, makes Steve look at him. "Whatever we do or don't find out, just remember you're not alone in this. Not _this_ time."

Steve huffs out a little breath. Danny can't tell whether it's meant to be a laugh or a snort of derision, and then Steve says, "Well, you remember the same thing too, Danno."

_Yeah_, Danny thinks. _Yeah._ _He's right. I never had to go this alone. It was stupid to try. I almost lost everything because of it._

But all he does is elbow Steve's ribs, which earns him a scowl, and within seconds he's telling Steve everything that he, Chin and Kono have discovered and his and Chin's theories hatched in the parking lot near Kamekona's shrimp truck, and all of the things that seem off to him and by the time he's done, he's sure he's going to feel like going right back to sleep again but it doesn't matter now because _this_ is what he should've done to begin with, and he's silently admitting he's a fucking idiot and really, really glad Steve didn't just leave after slamming the door or shoot him in the head for violating his trust on the having stolen his password thing and Jesus Christ, he can't stop thinking and babbling until suddenly Steve actually reaches out and puts a hand over Danny's mouth and Danny thinks in utter mortification, _Oh, my God, was I saying all that out loud?_

Steve's grin and largely failing attempt to _not_ laugh tells him he was doing exactly that. Danny feels his ears get hot in embarrassment and knows they're telltale red like they always get, hopes his cheekbones don't match them in color at this moment because, Christ.

Steve moves his hand away and says, "This is Five-0 business now," and pats the flash drives in his pocket. "You have exactly thirty minutes to tell me where your custody case stands, and then I'm going to come up with a plan to keep you in Hawaii."

And Danny smiles.

Because he'll be damned if he doesn't think that somehow, Steve McGarrett actually _can_ do just that.


	13. Chapter 13

Two amazingly good cups of coffee later, courtesy of a partner who still keeps giving him funny looks but is also caffeinating him and hasn't actually killed him (literally) yet, so Danny takes it as a win, he finds himself pulling up to HQ just behind Steve, slotting the Camaro into its customary spot, and getting out of the car.

Steve asked him before they left Danny's apartment to _not_ call Kono and Chin because _he_ would call them and ask them to be ready for the partners' arrival. Danny feels like crap about it because the cousins are probably shitting bricks – or at the very least a little worried – about what's going on.

So when they walk into the bullpen shoulder-to-shoulder (well, sort of, Danny's well aware he falls a little, uh…short…in being able to actually stand shoulder-to-shoulder with McGarrett, thanks much) to find Kono and Chin standing on the far side of the touch-screen computer table with all sorts of images and files displayed on it and every hanging screen in the room, well, Danny's more than just a little surprised.

Because what's being displayed is everything Five-0 has on John McGarrett's murder, Governor Jameson's murder, Koji and Hiro Noshimuri, the Hesse brothers and Wo Fat.

"Go through this," is the first thing Steve says, tossing a flash drive across the room. "Pull it up so we can all see it."

"New case?" Chin asks as he catches the drive one-handed and slots it into a USB port. Kono's looking at Danny. Danny thinks Steve has all the finesse of a hungry crocodile and wonders where that Paul Hogan dude is when you need him.

Steve nods, takes a sip of his own coffee and leans his right hip…okay, upper thigh…against the table. "Yes. We're looking into what's really going on with my mother."

Kono's jaw drops.

Chin's eyes go wide just as he's double-clicking the flash drive folder open on the computer table.

The cousins look at Danny, who says, "I told him all of it. I gave him everything I have, told him what you and I talked about," he says, looking directly at Chin.

Then their eyes dart back to Steve, and Kono's biting her lip. "Guys," Steve says, "I don't approve of the tactics, but I understand the intent."

He sounds so oddly formal and Danny thinks maybe it's Steve's way of dealing with the fact that he's about to find out a whole shitload about his mom that he doesn't want to know.

Then Danny's cell phone rings. He doesn't recognize the number but sees it's a New Jersey area code so he walks toward his office with his coffee in one hand and the phone in the other just as the flash drive folder opens to display about thirty different files: some PDFs, some photos and a few Word documents and TIFF files.

"Detective Williams," Danny answers, putting the phone to his ear.

"_Danny, it's me,"_ comes a whispered voice he thinks might be female.

"Who?" Danny asks, turning to find that Steve and the cousins all have eyes on him.

"_Mandy," _is the fiercely whispered reply.

"Why are you whispering?" Danny asks, heading back out to the computer table. He puts the call on speaker and lays it atop the glass.

"_Because that shit you asked me to dig into has me buried in a metric fuckton of _trouble_!" _Mandy replies.

Everyone's eyes go wide. "Where are you?"

"_Hiding out for the moment. Danny, I covered my tracks so well there's no way _anyone_ could've known I'd looked into that McGarrett woman!"_

To his credit, Steve doesn't flinch. He is, however, glaring at the phone.

"Then who are you in trouble with?" Danny asks.

"_I don't fucking _know_, Daniel, what the hell is that _woman_ into? This could _only_ be CIA, what did you do, put me onto a goddamn defected CIA agent?"_

"CIA agent?" Danny repeats, then looks at the tabletop where a large PDF file that's mostly got black lines running through every page of it because it's so classified, is being flipped through by Chin and studied by Steve. "I don't know what she is or isn't, that's what we're trying to figure out. We just now pulled open the files you sent me—"

But Danny's interrupted by the sound of a loud bang, and then a loud screech and they all hear Mandy holler, _"NO!"_ and a gunshot.

And then nothing.

Danny feels all the blood drain from his face. "Mandy?" He frantically picks up the phone, like yelling directly into it will get him an answer. "Mandy!"

"Been tracing the call," Kono says, fingers flying over the screen. "Hang on…almost got it…"

"Mandy, answer me! _Mandy_!"

"Hang up, Danny," Steve says. When Danny doesn't immediately comply, Steve grabs his phone out of his hand, ends the call and then actually powers the phone down completely. "I said hang _up_," he growls.

"What the—how did—why the _hell_ did you do that, she's in _trouble_—"

"She's dead, Danny," Steve whispers, handing Danny's phone back to him. "And it's not going to take them long to trace the phone number she called, but at least having yours shut off will slow them down."

Danny shakes his head. "Mandy's the head…she's…the head of the…Newark FBI…she _can't_ be dead."

Steve's jaw is set as he looks from Danny to Kono to Chin. "I'm sorry about your friend, but as soon as she said CIA, it clicked."

"What clicked, Steve?" Chin asks.

Steve leans across the table, flips the open PDF window in his own direction and goes back ten pages until he finds the one he wants. He swings his hand and arm out and up, causing the window to invisibly fly from the tabletop onto the large screen at the center of the wall to one end of the room.

He moves forward, raises his hand and points to two words on the page…quite possibly the only two words that haven't been crossed out by black marker.

_ CALDRON _ TOMARE

Danny sees that Kono and Chin are frowning just as much as he is, so he decides to be the one to ask the obvious. "What is blacked-out-line caldron blacked-out-line tomare?"

Steve corrects his pronunciation of the last word. Danny scowls. "I need to get my mother in here now," is Steve's non-sequitur of a reply. He starts toward the doors leading out of their bullpen. Danny barely gets his coffee set down on the tabletop, can well imagine the death glare Chin's got pointed at his back for doing so, and runs after his partner, just catching up to him as he exits the double glass doors.

"Where are you going?" Danny asks.

Steve keeps walking. Danny swears the man takes those ridiculously long strides on purpose. "I told you where. I'm going to get my mother and bring her back here."

"What for? We haven't even been through the rest of those files that my friend from high school _died_, if you're to be believed, to get to us!"

Steve stops on a dime, so fast that Danny very nearly barrels right into his back. As it is, his nose bumps McGarrett's chest as the man turns to face him and Danny growls in frustration, backs up a couple steps and looks to find the thousand-yard stare firmly in place.

"I did _not_ tell you this," Steve says so quietly Danny can barely hear him. He leans forward and down until his lips are right next to Danny's ear. It makes Danny shiver involuntarily; hey, it's not his fault his ears are a hot spot. He'd bitch about it if he wasn't about to get a secret whispered to him. "Black Caldron was what we called the op where we captured Anton Hesse."

Steve rights himself and Danny feels his mouth open but no words coming out. He must've been speaking volumes anyway, though, because McGarrett answers him as though he's actually asked a question.

"It was my last Naval Intelligence op. I led it. You know how it ended. And tomare is the phonetic spelling of the Japanese word for 'stop.'"

"But why would you recognizing half the name of your last op plus a Japanese word have you storming out of here to grab your mother for interrogation?" Danny asks, thoroughly confused.

Steve shakes his head a little, like he's debating what to say. Finally he loosens up, swings his arms around a bit, shakes his head more firmly and seems to have acquiesced to the fact that he's got to let Danny in at least a _little_ way, because he says, "Your FBI friend said she thought it was CIA after her as a result of digging into my mother, and asked if you'd put her on to a defected CIA agent."

Danny nods. So far, so good.

"Then I see Caldron and tomare on one of the files she dug up."

Danny nods again. Okay. He's with him.

Steve turns away like he's trying to run, maybe, or like he's just trying to figure out what to say, possibly, or like he's at a loss and trying to tamp down feelings of panic which he's not really very successfully trying to hide in his eyes. Finally he turns back around, his gaze locks onto Danny's and he speaks.

"Danny, Black Caldron was a joint op between Naval Intelligence and the CIA." He takes a couple of breaths, letting that sink in. "And the search started in Tokyo, where the original intel came from via a CIA source that even _I_ wasn't privy to."

And suddenly the whole picture becomes clear.

Judy McGarrett was hiding out in Japan, possibly for the entire twenty years after her faked death.

Joe White has obvious ties to Japan, including helping Hiro Noshimuri escape back to there from Hawaii by faking his own death.

_Note to Self: Faking deaths seems to be a Joe White specialty._

Steve headed up an op in league with the CIA to get a lower-level player on Wo Fat's chain. Wo Fat, big cheese in the Yakuza. The Yakuza, of Japanese origin.

Shelburne having killed Wo Fat's father. Judy McGarrett being identified to Steve, by Joe, as Shelburne. _A housewife killing a Yakuza man's father? Seriously?_

Judy not really having been in the theater group she'd purported herself to be a part of, and her husband either not caring or ignoring it.

John thinking the only way to keep his kids safe was getting them out of Hawaii.

Joe being in Hawaii before and after Steve's birth.

Joe being able to be contacted by Danny after Steve was arrested, in spite of the fact that he was supposedly engaged in a black op at the time.

Joe, mostly likely, still being in Japan after handing Steve his mother. As though waiting for something or some_one_, like Japan is Ground Zero for whatever the hell is going on.

All of it, every little tiny piece of information, every little scrap of truth, half-truth and non-truth, all of it's swirling around inside Danny's head and when he refocuses on Steve's face, he sees that Steve is slotting it all together, too.

Without a word they turn and pretty well jog out of the palace, headed for the Camaro. Danny tosses Steve the keys as he moves to the passenger side while Steve opens the driver's side door, smoothly catching the keys one-handed.

They slide into their seats.

Steve starts the engine and puts the car in gear. Then he stops, hesitates, staring out the front window of the Camaro. "Shit," he whispers, and Danny can tell that he's trying to psych himself up for whatever's about to come next.

"Not alone, babe," is how Danny chooses to help and it seems to work because Steve looks across at him, nods briskly and hits the accelerator.

They're off to bring Steve's _mother_ in for questioning.

And probably to find out a truth that will change Steve's and Mary's lives forever.


	14. Chapter 14

_Author's Note: I want to thank all of you who are reading and leaving reviews. You are really running with speculations about what's going on, how you feel about what Danny's done so far and your thoughts on how all the characters are handling themselves and reacting to the situations at hand. It's great fun to see the positives and negatives from everybody about how things are playing out in the story…to know that it's affecting you all one way or the other is the best thing a writer can hear. So thank you for sticking with me, and hold onto your hats, guys, 'cause the ride's only going to get wilder…_

* * *

They've made it halfway to the McGarrett house, Steve debating after Danny telling him about Mary's own suspicions and what she'd confided to him, whether or not to phone her and let her know they're on they're way. Only he doesn't get a chance to decide because his phone rings and when Danny looks at the screen while quickly Steve's quickly mounting it on the Camaro's dashboard, he sees it's Mary Ann herself.

Danny frowns as Steve answers the call.

"_She's gone! Steve, she's gone!"_

"What?" Danny's eyes grow wide as Steve pushes the pedal to the floor and asks, "What do you _mean_ she's gone?"

"_I was in the shower!"_ comes Mary's frantic reply, and she sounds like she's running, and they can hear the uncharacteristically heavy surf out in back of Steve's place pretty loudly so they know she's got to be outside. _"When I got out, I got dressed but it was real quiet so I called out for Mom and she's not here, Steve! Her purse, her wallet, her money, everything, her ID, it's all here but she's not!"_

Steve's got that scowl on his face like he did when they were headed to Mary's rental to look for her and Danny feels himself breathing just a little harder as the adrenaline starts to flow. "Did you look outside, Mary?" Steve asks in that clipped, demanding tone that Danny knows only means he's equal parts scared (not that he'll ever admit it) and damn well about to do whatever it takes to make whatever's wrong, right.

"_Yes! That's where I am now!"_

Five minutes of gut-wrenching "Stay, hidden, Mary!" directions from Steve with Mary fighting panic, and the Camaro's screeching to a halt in the driveway of Steve's house, the partners are out of the car with guns drawn and Mary's running toward them from the front door. Steve grabs her in a one-armed embrace and she's babbling before she even gets halfway to them.

"She's _gone_, not a note, nothing, I even checked under the fridge, you know, in case it slid under there like the time I left Dad a note that I was going to be at the library with Julie and—"

"Hey, hey," Danny says, holstering his weapon and coming to stand next to the brother and sister, "come on, now, calm down. So you can't find her anywhere, you've searched both floors, the whole of the property."

Mary nods and says, "I even went into the bushes, scraped the hell outta my legs and arms." And Danny looks down at the angry red scratches covering her exposed skin, many with little pinpricks of blood seeping out. He puts a hand on her shoulder and squeezes.

"I'll check inside the house," Steve says. "Danny, you take the outside and _keep her close_."

Which, Danny thinks to himself, says an awful lot that Steve's putting his little sister in Danny's hands. So Danny nods, gets his gun back into his right hand, grabs Mary's right hand with his left and tugs her over to the grassy area next to the driveway. Mary's breathing hard, but Danny's able to tune it out and listen for any out-of-place sounds. He hears nothing.

They move along the bushes with currently closed-up flowers, Mary not saying a word, but he can feel her rapid heartbeat through the palm of her hand, so he squeezes it reassuringly. Jesus Christ, first Judy's alive, then she's back in Hawaii, then they figure she's not who or what she says she is and now she disappears while Mary's right there in the _house_?

"Danny," Mary whispers as they round the garage and reach the edge of it, Danny flattening them up against the wall, "do you think she was kidnapped?"

Rather than speak, Danny lets go of her hand, puts a finger to his lips and peeks around the corner of the garage into the back yard. There isn't anyone there, and no sign of disturbance. He takes Mary's hand again and keeps his senses tuned to the environment, but still, nothing sounds out-of-place.

He leads Mary down to the beach, eyes constantly scanning left, right and behind them. They get to the water's edge. He looks right and finds nothing. He looks left and finds nothing. Then he hears a cell phone ring and looks toward the house where Steve's just coming through the lanai doors, pulling out his phone and answering it.

"Yeah, Chin," he's saying as he holsters his weapon. Danny does the same with his, still holding tight to Mary. "Yeah, that's right, not a trace of her that we can see." He looks to Danny for confirmation; Danny shakes his head 'no.' "I want them out here on the double to look for trace, blood spatter, anything. My sister was in the damn _shower_, Chin," he finishes, and Danny can see the minor tremor running through his body, the look on his face projecting pure _rage_ at the very idea that Mary was so close to being that defenseless, _that_ in peril, naked in a shower.

Mary tugs away from Danny as Steve hangs up the phone and walks into his embrace. He rests his chin on the top of her head as tears start rolling down her cheeks and squeezes her tightly, eyes locking with Danny's.

They can't catch a break. Steve and Mary just can't catch a fucking _break_.

"All right, let's go inside, check out the contents of her purse, okay, see if maybe she fired up that laptop you keep in your dad's study, have some water or, hell, beer," Danny says, voice projecting a calmness he's definitely not feeling inside.

Steve shoots him a look that feels like gratitude and the three begin the walk back up to the house

"I lost her, Steve," Mary says, voice trembling. "I lost her."

"No, you didn't," he counters with certainty. "What's important here is that you weren't hurt, you weren't kidnapped, that you're right here with us. And until this is over, you're not leaving our sight, you got that?"

Mary nods.

"He knows about our suspicions, Mary," Danny says when they reach the kitchen and Steve goes to the fridge and grabs three bottles of water. "I told him everything."

Mary's eyes have gone wide. She looks between Danny and her brother a few times, taking the offered bottle of water as Danny does the same.

"No more secrets," Steve says. "Anything you're worried about, any concerns you have, anything you notice, you _tell_ me, okay?"

Mary nods again. "Yeah, I was just…afraid I'd…I didn't want to not speak to you for the rest of my life, you know?"

Danny half-smiles as he opens his bottle of water. "Yeah, don't worry, I got that hard part out of the way for all of us."

Steve shoots him a look, takes a swig of his water and winds up downing half the bottle in one go, wiping his mouth with the back of the same hand holding the water when he's finished. "We were already on our way here, Mare. We were coming to get Mom and take her back to HQ."

"What for?" Mary asks with a frown.

"To interrogate her," Steve replies succinctly. Mary's look is, "do _what_?" but then sirens are heard and the rumble of Chin's bike and cars braking and gravel crunching and before Danny can blink the house is full of Chin and Kono and at least eight crime scene techs and probably a good dozen HPD uniforms and a couple plainclothes detectives thrown into the mix and _Jesus_.

It's two hours before Mary and Steve (and even Danny, a little bit) are done answering questions, telling what they know, giving descriptions, the whole nine. Two whole hours before the cousins can join Steve, Mary and Danny at the table on the lanai. Before Chin can, over a freshly-opened Longboard, look Steve in the eye across the table and say, "I found something else in those files from Danny's FBI friend."

_Oh, God_, Danny thinks. _Mandy_. Yet another person to die in a long line of murders that are connected to his partner's family. Shit. Just _shit_.

There isn't time to grieve now; he can't allow himself the luxury. But when (if?) Mandy's body is ever actually found and properly laid to rest, he'll be the first one on a plane to Jersey to pay his respects. He has a feeling Steve will be right there with him, wanting to take all the guilt of the world onto his shoulders.

"What'd you find, Chin?" Steve asks, then takes a pull from his bottle.

"Your mother's referenced in several early CIA personnel files, Steve."

"CIA?" Mary breathes, because of course she has no clue what's happened. Steve holds a finger up to her and she falls quiet.

"Thing is, I wouldn't even have known it was your mother in the list of graduates from the Farm at all except I matched the social security number up with a spook file."

"Spook file?" Danny repeats.

"Yeah, it's a list of false names given to CIA operatives with nothing to identify them other than a number. Back before the 1990s," Steve explains, "they used the agent's real social security number as that unique identifier, but then realized it was enabling some groups like the KGB and some high-tech rogue terrorist cells to trace them back to their true identities. So they started generating random alphanumeric codes as agent identification."

"Right," Chin nods. "Only according to what that file says, your mother joined back in the mid-sixties, when they were still using socials, and I did a search to see if I could match the social that was next to the name. Only to find that it was associated to Judith Elaine Krupps."

"That's Mom's maiden name," Mary says.

"Well, not according to the source file. If that paperwork is genuine, Judith Elaine Krupps was a fabricated name for one Doris Reynolds Meyer from Waterloo, Iowa. Steve, the birth date's not even the same." Chin pauses, Kono's watching Steve as carefully as Danny is. "Judith Elaine Krupps doesn't actually exist."

Kono opens her mouth, hesitates, then adds, "Which means Judith Elaine _McGarrett_ isn't a real person." Her eyes dart to Chin, then back to Steve. "At least, her identity isn't."

Steve's face is hard. It's impossible to tell what he's thinking. Mary's looking at each of them in turn, total disbelief written all over her face.

And Danny, well…of all the things he thought might've been 'wrong' with the Judy McGarrett situation? Her being a CIA operative named _Doris _had never even entered his mind.

Ho-ly-_fuck_.


	15. Chapter 15

Steve's been pacing the lanai for the last five minutes, Concentration Face in full effect, and even cheeky, bull-headed Mary knows enough not to interrupt. Just when Danny's feeling like he might need to take a Dramamine due to all the movement, however, Steve suddenly stops at the opposite end of the lanai, turns and looks back at them. Specifically, his eyes zero in on his sister.

Then he stalks back to the group even as Chin looks up from his iPad, where he's been reviewing more of Mandy's files courtesy of Five-0's cloud. "I think I may know how Joe White fits into this," Chin says and that completely jolts Steve out of whatever it was he was thinking. Chin looks down at the iPad, turns it around to face Steve, then picks it up and hands it to him. "According to the parts of this file that are legible, your mother's handler when she was living here was Naval officer code-named 'Jazz'."

Steve swallows, stares at the PDF page on the iPad, and Danny doesn't even need him to answer that to know 'Jazz' is definitely associated with Joe and that Steve knows that for a fact.

Chin takes pity on those not in-the-know. "John mentioned a couple of times that Joe knew how to play sax, and would sometimes jam with the guys down at Jazz Minds on Kapiolani."

_Ah,_ Danny thinks. Then something else tweaks in his head at the mention of John and Joe in the same sentence. "You know Joe was here both before and after you were born, right?" Danny asks his partner because hell, why not?

Steve looks at him. Frowns. Evidently he did _not_ know this. "I only know my dad said he and Joe served together, that that's how they knew each other."

"He was stationed at Pearl from '73 to '77," Danny says and yeah, Steve's face tells him he most definitely did _not_ know _that_ particular gem of information.

"Dad left the Navy in '73," Steve says thoughtfully.

"Do you think Dad knew about Mom? Maybe he was part of it with Joe?" Mary asks.

Steve looks up at Chin, then at Kono. Danny notices the look on her face just as Steve says to her, "What are you thinking? You can say it. Don't hold anything back."

Kono nods and her words come rushing out like she's been having trouble keeping them inside. "Your mother lived right here," Kono says. "She was married to your dad, they had you two," she gestures between Steve and Mary Ann, "and she lived the life of a cop's wife, a housewife and a mother."

Steve opens his mouth, but Kono keeps on going.

"But if Joe was here right before and after you were born, Steve, and he's the one who's been protecting her all this time, knowing full-well where she was, and has been both protecting and hiding things from you just as fiercely, well…" Now she hesitates, bites her lip, glances at Chin and then at Danny, then returns her gaze to Steve. "The first thing that popped into _my_ head, was…" Her voice trails off like she just _can't_ say it.

Danny's mind is buzzing and he figures it out the same time Steve does. He knows this because Steve suddenly says, "You mean what if John McGarrett isn't my father."

Mary gasps, "What?" and rockets to her feet. Steve closes his eyes, reopens them, looks down at her. "You think…you think Joe _White_ is your _dad_?" Steve doesn't respond. "What about me? Is he _my_ dad, too?" When Steve still says nothing, Mary grabs his arm with both hands and shakes him. "Steve, is that even _possible_?"

"Possible?" Steve repeats. "Yeah. Seems that way. Likely?" He takes a deep breath, rubs the palm of his hand down his face. "I don't know, Mare. I mean, if Mom really _was_ or even still _is_ a CIA agent, and Joe was classified as Black Ops when we now know he was protecting Mom, that has to mean there's more to him being stationed at Pearl, more to _all _of this than just what Mom used to do for a living." He stops and thinks a moment as Mary sinks back down into her chair. Danny leans forward and takes her by the hand. She smiles at him, but it's not a smile that reaches her eyes.

"I mean, look," Steve continues, and continues the pacing as well, "what if it was all a cover? Her marriage to Dad, I mean. What if there was something she'd done that necessitated her completely changing her identity, and Joe was the only person who knew where she was? Maybe they got close…"

Steve stops. Stops talking. Stops pacing. Keeps his back to the table. Danny shakes his head. Even _Steve_ can't say the words out loud.

Chin reaches across the table and takes the iPad from where Steve had set it down. "Wo Fat _knew_ it was Shelburne who killed his father. But he didn't know who Shelburne _was_, hence North Korea," he says, flipping through several files on the iPad. He stops. Looks up at Danny. "Hence? I been hangin' around _you_ too long."

Kono and Danny smile, but their smiles quickly fade when Steve rushes back to the table. "Wait," he says, digging into one of the pockets on his cargo pants and pulling out the other two flash drives Danny had given him. He looks at Danny. "You said you got some intel about Wo Fat's dealings in North Korea when I went there to help Jenna."

Danny nods. "Yeah, according to the..." He cuts himself off because this is shit he's not supposed to talk about, but Steve waves for him to continue, so he takes a deep breath and does just that. "I'm doing this from memory, so bear with me here. Wo Fat's father apparently started a Yakuza contingent in North Korea early on in Kim Jong Il's regime."

Steve seats himself at the table, eyes locked onto Danny's.

"Kim Jong Il didn't make a _move_ without consulting Taro Fat for _years_. Then all of a sudden Taro disappeared and…oh, shit." Danny can feel his eyes get big. Steve tenses, like he _knows_ what's running through Danny's head but Danny can't even believe what he's thinking. What he's _remembering_ from that file. "The file I was reading notes that the Taro Fat problem was rectified in 1992."

"The year Mom supposedly died," Mary Ann breathes.

"The year her death was _faked_ because she fucking _killed_ Taro Fat," Steve says, light bulb not only going off, but exploding painfully over his head.

"It never even _occurred_ to me," Danny begins apologetically because yeah, he'd overlooked that but hell, to his credit, he was trying to find _Steve_, not look into the 'death' of his mother at the time.

"Steve, this makes sense," Mary says, turning to him, shaking her head, biting her lip. "Remember when Mom was gone for a while one year? Was in '92? It must've been, because I remember thinking she hadn't even been back home for very long when she..." Mary takes a deep breath. "You were taking care of me because Dad was busy with work and for a while it was just you and me at home after school, do you remember that?"

Danny thinks that judging by the look on Steve's face, he _does_ remember. "She was gone for over two months, told us she had to visit her mother because she was sick, didn't know when she'd be back." Steve shakes his head. "We never met our maternal grandparents. _Nobody_ on Mom's side." He snorts derisively. "Now we know why."

"When was she gone exactly?" Chin asks gently.

Steve looks up at him. "She'd only been back for a couple weeks, I think, when…" He takes a deep breath. "Jesus Christ. She'd just killed Taro Fat, and come home, and…Joe must've…they must have realized the Yakuza knew _she_ was the one who got him."

Danny nods. "So they concocted the fake death, put someone else in that car, blew it up, knew if anyone looked into it, it'd be connected to Taro's _son_ because those types of bombs are his MO."

"Which Jenna, who was _also_ CIA, _knew_," Kono concludes. "After all, she came up with stuff from your dad's toolbox, and we know Koji Noshimuri was the one who stole it under Hiro's direction."

"You think the CIA's in bed with the Yakuza as well as the Navy where this is concerned?" Chin asks.

Steve doesn't have a chance to respond because his phone's suddenly ringing and he's frowning at whatever he sees on the screen as he pulls it out. He automatically puts it on speaker so when the voice on the other end of the line speaks, every single person at the table hears it at the same time.

"_You need to stop this now, son, or none of you are going to live long enough to find out all the answers you're looking for."_

"Joe," Steve seethes, face looking for all the world like he'd shoot the man, strangle him, and maybe just kick the shit out of him afterward for the hell of it. "Where's my mother?"

"_She's safe."_

"That's not an answer."

"_I'm here, Steve."_

"Mom!" the siblings exclaim at the same time, both getting to their feet so fast their chairs tip backwards.

"_Joe's right, you have to stop. You're all in danger. You need to _stop_, Steve. _Please_."_

"I want _answers_!" Steve yells into the phone and Danny thinks that vein pulsing at his partner's temple is seriously looking like it's going to blow. "God_dam_mit, our whole _lives_ have been a lie! Were we part of your cover too, Mom, huh? Was _Dad_ in on it or was he just as much a cover as your fake name of Judy?"

There's a long silence. Evidently Joe and Judy (or Doris, whatever) weren't aware of just how much Steve knows. It's Joe who finally speaks even as Mary's eyes fill with tears.

_"I've protected you as best I can. We thought it was okay for your mother to return to Hawaii because of Wo Fat being in prison, but the game has changed, Steve."_

"What are you talking about, Joe?" Steve asks, face so rigid Danny thinks he might hear a bone in Steve's jaw crack soon. "What has _changed_?"

"_Hiro Noshimuri told his son the truth about Shelburne, about Wo Fat, about the whole thing before he died."_

"So you didn't kill in time to keep him from spilling what he knew," Steve spits.

There's an interminable amount of silence before Joe finally says, _"No. I figured out he was a liability too late. That's why Adam came after Wo Fat when you brought him back to Hawaii, Steve. He came back to help him get_ away _from you, just under the pretense of wanting to kill him to avenge his father's murder._"

Kono looks like she's about to puke. That Adam kept all that from her...it takes her cousin's arm around her to keep her relatively calm.

Steve's eyes squeeze closed. His face is tight, mouth drawn in a straight line, lips pressed together. All like he's desperately trying to shut out the world. Danny can't help himself. He rises to his feet, moves forward and places his left hand on his friend's back. He looks to his right and pulls Mary close. He looks up at Chin and Kono, who rise from their chairs and come to stand at Steve's left. Kono's hand grasps Steve's. Hey, her emotions are pretty deeply in this, too. Chin's hand finds Steve's shoulder, and Danny knows Chin's thinking about how his wife and his cousin were both almost killed for all this bullshit.

Danny wonders if right now, Steve's _ohana_ is the only thing holding him together. He glares at the phone lying on the table, _daring_ Joe White, Doris-Judy-Whatever or anyone else to even _try_ to tear _that_ apart.

The conviction he sees in the eyes of Kono and Chin tell him they're definitely thinking the same damn thing.


	16. Chapter 16

Steve swallows so hard, is holding himself so rigid, that Danny can feel the movement of his throat muscles all the way down at the small of Steve's back where his hand is lightly resting. He presses his fingertips in a little harder. He needs Steve to _feel_ this. To not just intellectually _know_ he's not alone, but to really and truly _feel_ and _believe_ it.

"Steve?" Mary says, looking up at her brother, wiping her tears away.

"_Steve, Mary…I'm sorry. I never meant…I love you. No matter who or what I am, that's never been a lie."_

Steve's eyes open and it doesn't take a genius to see the complete devastation woven into the depths of them. He looks left at first Chin, who seems like he's trying to project all the zen of the Universe into Steve's soul. Then at Kono, whose steady gaze speaks volumes that doesn't need words.

Steve takes a deep, shaky breath and opens his arms to his sister. Danny makes to back away because while he wants to be there for the siblings, it's not _his_ entire life that's been written on pages with disappearing ink…and nothing to replace the words with.

But Steve swings his right arm out and grabs Danny by the shoulder, reeling him in so hard he actually _Oofs_ when he hits Steve the Tree Trunk's side. "Handsy," Danny mutters, but he couldn't be happier because Steve's _ohana_ got through to him. (Danny does a Note to Self, however, to ensure Steve doesn't think that from here on out, manhandling him will become as commonplace as his spontaneous use of "Danno.")

"Joe, you bring my mother to Five-0 HQ, she couldn't be safer there. You'll be safe, too. We'll protect you—"

"_You can't protect us, Steve,"_ comes the voice of his mother. _"Not from the Yakuza, the Navy _and_ the CIA."_ Danny sees the look on Steve's face change into something like horror. _"The only chance we have of staying alive and keeping all of _you_ alive is by remaining one step ahead of them and staying as far away from you as we can."_

"But _why_?" Mary asks, tears rolling down her face. "_Why_, Mom?"

"_Oh, baby," _Judy…or Doris…or whatever…says, and they can all hear the emotion in her voice. _"I was just doing my job. John knew only the lies I had to tell him. It was pure coincidence that he started investigating the Yakuza when he got involved in rooting organized crime out of Honolulu. He got too close to what was going on so I had to make my move before I intended to."_

Danny just wishes he could take the pain written into every line on Steve's face away from him but he knows he can't…that Steve and his sister have to deal with this, that nothing Danny does is going to make it hurt any less. Not even hugs.

Joe's voice is softer when he speaks. _"Don't try to find us, son. Stop everything. Get rid of every piece of information related to us that you have. Don't go anywhere alone for a while. Don't stay in your homes. Once they're sure we're gone, it'll blow over."_

"What, when you're _dead_?" Danny blurts out. All eyes turn to look incredulously at him. He feels his face burning up but hell, it's true, isn't it? He's just the only one tactless enough to actually _say_ it.

"_Pretty much,"_ Joe confirms and okay, Danny doesn't feel so bad now.

Then the call ends and all the team and Mary can do is look at each other as they pull apart and stand there looking completely lost. Suddenly, Danny realizes, his problems with Rachel taking Grace out of Hawaii seem so damn miniscule compared to the shitstorm raging around the McGarretts.

His breath hitches.

_Joe's right, you have to stop._

Rachel…

_You're all in danger._

Danny tenses.

Grace…

_You're all in danger._

Without a word, Danny's running back into the house and straight for the front door. He can hear Steve yelling for him, size elevens pounding the floor not far behind, but he doesn't stop.

All he can think is that if he wants to stay associated with Steve McGarrett, maybe it _is_ better for Rachel and Grace to be nowhere fucking _near_ him. Maybe it'd be better for them to go to Las Vegas. He's going to tell them-Danny stops at the Camaro, only then realizing he doesn't have his goddamn keys. Steve…the man who's currently sprinting out of the front door of his house…does.

"Danny, what the _hell_?"

"Grace," Danny says, throwing his hands up in the air, feeling tears fill his eyes. "Rachel."

"What about them? Were you supposed to pick Grace up?"

Danny shakes his head, turns eyes he knows are filling up away from his partner. "Give me my keys."

"Why, Danny?"

"I need to make sure they're safe and you turned my phone off." Yeah, he sounds petulant, but shit, you know?

"Here, I'll call them."

Danny feels a nudge on his bicep. He looks up to find Steve's moved right where he can easily see Danny's about to get _real_ unmanly. Danny angrily whirls around and looks at the house because _shit_, Steve didn't cry just now when his whole world came crashing down in pieces at his feet. So Danny's just a fucking wuss and doesn't need his SEAL partner to know that.

But Steve surprises him. Because he steps forward, gathers Danny in a BAMF SEAL hug and says, "We'll call them. We'll put a whole army of HPD on them."

Danny shakes his head and pulls away. "You don't get it, Steve. If anyone in the CIA or the Yakuza or the Navy comes after my daughter or my ex-wife to get to me, to get to you...HPD, as well-trained as they are, aren't going to be able to stop groups like those and you know it as well as I do."

"Then what is it you were going to do?" Steve asks, wearing Confused Face.

"I was going to tell them to get on the plane tonight," Danny replies…well…more like, mumbles, he guesses, because Steve asks him to repeat it. So Danny does.

And oh, there's a completely new version of Aneurism Face he'll have to name at some point when he's feeling jovial again. "You were going to tell them to go to Vegas."

Danny nods. His heart is breaking.

"You should go with them."

Danny's head whips up to stare at Steve's completely serious eyes. "What?"

"You heard me. I can't ask you to sacrifice being near Grace for me, Danny."

Looking heavenward because isn't it just like Steve to say something like that, Danny shakes his head again and then locks gazes with his partner. "That's just it. You haven't asked me to. You never asked me anything, Steve. Not if I wanted to be your partner, not if I wanted on Five-0. You've never asked me whether I wanted any part of what my life's become since moving here. But you've never asked me _for_ anything, either."

"I asked you trust me."

It feels to Danny like the air around them has become so charged, that if he reached out to touch Steve right now they'd wind up electrocuting each other, and wouldn't _that _just take the cake. "I'm not leaving until I know for sure that you, Mary, Chin and Kono are _safe_. That these _assholes_ aren't going to _fuck_ with you anymore."

"That could take _months_, Danny!" Steve protests, doing a very impressive imitation of a ranting Danny, if Danny does say so himself. "Hell, it could take _years_! Grace could be a _grand_mother by the time any of this is resolved! It's _my_ fucked up life, _not_ yours." He whirls to face Danny, hands balled into fists at his sides. "You are going to get on that plane, you are going with them to Las Vegas _tonight_, you'll break off _all _contact with me so Grace's Danno is just as safe as she is."

And that makes Danny explode, because "What the actual _fuck_, McGarrett? You think I could sit out in the sun watching Grace swim at some casino's pool _knowing_ how much danger you guys are in? You think I could send Grace on her first _date_ having no idea whether you're alive or dead, whether Mary makes it back to LA or winds up floating in the goddamn Pacific somewhere? You think Grace would ever _forgive _me for leaving her Uncle Steve when he needs his backup more than _ever_? What the hell kind of coward does that make me?" Oh, now he's on a tear and he's building up to the mother of all rants, raves and gesticulations as he walks away, then comes storming back to his admittedly shocked partner. "You think I'd last the _plane_ ride knowing I'd just up and _left_ you here to face this without me? Why the _hell_ do you think I didn't go to Jersey with them the night Wo Fat killed Jameson, huh? _Why_? And now you think I'm going to do just that, going to ditch you and—_mmphhgfuckman_!"

Yeah, Danny's lost his ability to rant courtesy of Steve octopussing him into silence with those goddamn tattooed arms (how the hell many does he have, anyway?) wrapped around him and Danny's poor face smushed into his chest and oh, shit, yep, Steve already thinks this manhandling thing is a given and _Christ_, now he's got a handsy SEAL partner who calls him Danno and—

Danny shoves Steve _hard_, successfully getting him a good foot away. "Okay, okay, _fine_, _geez_," he says, hoping to _God_ that Chin, Kono and Mary didn't see that.

At least he gets the gratification of Steve looking embarrassed about the whole thing. "So," is what Steve says. "How are we going to play this?"

Danny's not sure exactly what he's talking about, but he picks the most likely thing. "I'm going to tell them to leave. It'll be a bitch to explain since I can't tell them too much, but Rachel will probably jump at the chance to bypass the damn contestation, so all in all I don't think it'll be—"

"I'm going with you."

"You're—no, you're not."

"Yes, I am." Danny opens his mouth to ask if they're now at the stage where they're arguing like schoolkids but Steve barrels right over him with, "Danny, it's _my_ fault this is happening. _My family's_ fault that _your family_ is in danger. So if anyone should be there to explain it to Stan and Rachel, it's _me_."

A weight feels like it just lifted from Danny's chest because having Steve there will probably prevent the yelling and screaming that the situation would surely have devolved to had Danny just gone on his own.

"Okay, _Christ_, fine," he grouses, because Steve doesn't need to know he's glad to not have to do this alone.

Only he's sure Steve _does_ know with that sappy look he gives him, so Danny rolls his eyes and Steve tells him, "Let me just brief Chin, Kono and Mary. I'm having them take her back to HQ for now. This house isn't safe."

Steve starts walking purposefully toward the house and Danny feels he absolutely _has_ to point out, "This house has _never_ been safe!"

Because, yeah. Bullets. Kidnappings. Intruders. Tasering. Before all that, sneaky CIA bullshit.

Steve flips him off.

Danny chuckles.

Then the cold, hard reality of it hits him. He's about to tell Rachel to take their daughter away from Hawaii.

Away from _him_.

And he has no idea for how long.

Now his heart is breaking all over again.


	17. Chapter 17

Danny rubs the back of his neck as Rachel sets a sterling silver serving tray filled with matching silver teapot, milk pitcher, sugar bowl, teaspoons, sugar tongs and four cups and saucers down onto the table between where he's seated on the couch with Steve, and the two matching wingback chairs opposite it.

Stan's sitting in the one to Danny's right. Rachel pours herself a cup of tea complete with milk, and seats herself on the one to the left as Stan leans forward, drops a couple lumps of sugar into a cup, pours the tea and picks it up. Danny watches the Edwards' take sips of the hot liquid, vaguely remembering when he'd tried it for Rachel's sake before they were married and vowed to never let a cup of English tea near him ever again.

What? He likes coffee, okay?

"I can't imagine this is a social call," is how Stan breaks the ice. Danny has to hand it to him; he obviously is good at dealing with uncomfortable situations. Probably from his business dealings. The very business dealings that prompted this whole raving mess about Rachel wanting to take Grace to Vegas and then Danny wondering about the baby's parentage—

"You're right, Mr. Edwards, it isn't," Steve says. Danny sees Steve glance at him and wonders when the hell it was the two of them got to know each other so well that Steve knew Danny was rapidly spiraling into being pissed off instead of concentrating on the thing they're here to do, thus responding for him.

Rachel and Stan look square at Danny. He takes a deep breath. There goes yet another sigh, and he closes his eyes briefly before reopening them. "I want you, Stan and the kids on a plane to Vegas tonight."

Rachel's eyes widen. She sets her teacup down on the table between them. Stan does the same, eyeing his wife with concern. "_What_?" she asks in disbelief.

Steve leans forward, elbows on his thighs. "You remember what happened last year with the murder of Governor Jameson?"

Rachel nods. "Yes. You were arrested, but later cleared of all charges. In fact, if I remember correctly, you escaped by fleeing from a moving ambulance _en route_ to hospital."

Danny's eyes narrow. Evidently Rachel's brewing far more than a pot of tea with a crack like that. "Yes, because he was innocent and in prison and his life was in danger. He was stabbed in the _gut_, Rach, by the man who killed his _father_."

Steve takes over as Stan rests his hand on Rachel's forearm. "The man who was actually responsible for the governor's murder remained untouched until last week, when I managed to apprehend him in Japan and return him to Hawaii. He's currently out at Halawa awaiting a preliminary hearing."

"What's this to do with us, or with taking Grace to Las Vegas?" Rachel asks.

"Everything," Danny replies, lacing his fingers together to try and keep his hands from moving and maybe taking out one of Steve's eyes in the process. "Do you also remember how I told you that Steve's mother died when he was sixteen? And explaining to you that his father's murder was why Steve went into Reserves with the Navy and came back here? Why the task force was formed?"

Rachel nods, eyes now on Steve, who says, "I found out last week that my mother _didn't_ die."

Actually gasping out loud, Rachel just stares at him. "Didn't die? Are you saying she's still _alive_?"

"Yes, and until earlier today she was right back here, at home, with my sister and me. But then she disappeared again, and it turns out she wasn't who Mary and I thought she was."

Danny eyes his partner. He can tell it's really hard for Steve to talk to anyone about this. Hell, he has trouble talking to Five-0 about it, let alone Danny's ex-wife and her husband.

Rachel frowns. "I don't understand. Do you mean she's not your mother?"

Danny shakes his head. "We can't tell you the specifics, Rach, because it would put all of you in more danger than you already are."

"We're in danger?" Stan asks. "From what?"

"From my screwed-up past," Steve admits, much more freely than Danny would've believed possible. "I'm sorry we can't tell you more, but you have to believe me when I say that right now, anyone who knows _me_, knows any member of my family, is important to any member of the task force, is at risk. Especially if any of the entities involved think you know something you shouldn't."

Stan cocks his head like a confused dog, Danny notes, when he asks, "But wouldn't that mean Danny's in danger, too?"

Danny nods. "Which is why I'm not asking you, Stan…or Rachel…I'm _telling_ you…I want all four of you on a plane to Las Vegas tonight, and you _cannot_ contact any of us. Not me, not Steve, not Five-0, not the HPD switchboard. You have to go completely dark where anything or anyone connected to the McGarrett family in _any_ way is concerned."

"And you're remaining here," Rachel says…more like _accuses_…and Danny frowns at her.

"Of course I am. I have to help my team figure this out, figure out a way to keep Steve's mother alive, get these people to stop—"

"Why you?" Rachel asks, rising to her feet. Danny knows her too well; he can see the minor tremor in her hands a split second before she tucks them under the arms she's crossed defensively over her chest. "Why must you remain?"

Danny looks at her like she's just sprouted another head and maybe another couple of arms and legs for good measure because he doesn't honestly understand how the hell she can possibly ask him that. He blinks, and sees Rachel's suddenly become very self-conscious. Watches as she perches on the edge of the chair and glances at her husband.

"I told Danny he should go with you tonight," Steve offers. "He refused."

_Way to lay it all out there, partner, next thing you know she's going to think we have a 'thing' going on_, Danny says with his eyes and sees pink tinge Steve cheekbones. He congratulates himself for the effect that particular eye-whammy has before he turns back to face Rachel and Stan.

"Look…I'm in this just as deep as Steve is. If I came with you, tonight or at any point before this whole thing is completely taken care of, I would only make Grace, maybe the whole family, a target. I know things I'm not supposed to. I've seen things I shouldn't have. The only way for me to believe you'll be safe is if you leave this state and cut off all contact." Danny hears his voice break because _Grace_.

He looks down at his hands that're still in his lap. They're way _too _still. He's afraid to move because he's afraid one single, solitary twitch will send him into a tailspin he can't come out of.

"What of the contestation?" Rachel asks so quietly Danny barely hears her. "My attorney advised me only this morning that you're planning on contesting the filing within the week."

Danny looks up at her. "Forget about that. All that matters right now is Grace's safety. _Your_ safety, along with Stan's and the baby's. That is _all_ that matters, Rachel, and I'm not arguing with you about this."

"And in the future?" Rachel asks. "What if whoever these people are stop coming after you, or are arrested and placed in prison? What if Honolulu suddenly becomes safe again? Will you then simply pick up where you left off? Tell the court I took Grace to Las Vegas without your permission, without a hearing, to try and bring her back?"

"_No_!" Danny snaps, jumping to his feet. He supposes he should find it funny when Steve makes the exact same movement barely a nanosecond later, but he doesn't. "_Jesus_, Rachel, do you not _get it_? I'm talking about our daughter's _life_! _Your_ life! If nothing else, just call it being put on hold and if there ever comes a time when I'm safe enough to be in the same state as Grace, I will let you know."

He stalks away, jamming his hands in his pockets, knows damn well Rachel's right to have asked, and really not at _all_ pissed off at her…just at the situation in general. "Please, Rachel," he pleads, back still to everyone, "for my sanity and Grace's life, just do it. Send the driver for her now. All of you go get her, get to the airport, and go. _Please_."

Now he's just standing looking out of one of the front windows at where the Camaro's parked in the driveway. He feels his shoulders slump. He won't see his baby girl if Rachel does what he just asked her to.

"They're out early today," Rachel says from right behind him. He turns to look at her. "The entire school's let out at one due to a special event this evening which they must decorate the auditorium and classrooms for."

Danny's throat gets tight. "The graduation celebration."

Rachel nods. Her eyes are full of unshed tears. "You'd forgotten."

"Yeah, well, I've been a little fucked in terms of sleep and time to think," Danny replies, but there's no heat to it. "I'm sorry, Rachel. You were right, after Rick kidnapped her. Hell, after gunfire broke out at the football game. I know I could never have custody of her, not _full_ custody, which is why I never fought you the first time. My life as a cop isn't stable or safe enough for that." Danny takes a step forward, hands coming out of his pockets. "But all I ever wanted was to be present for her life. Be able to see her. Hug her. Hold her. Wipe her tears, brush her hair. Watch her grow."

He feels a tear slip out of his right eye but doesn't even try to brush it away. Rachel's eyes overflow, too, when he says, "But if the only way to keep her alive long enough to become the beautiful woman I know she will be is to stay away from her, I'll do it. I will give _anything_ to keep her safe, you _know_ that. My ability to see her, _or_ my life."

Danny's about to completely break down, so he moves to turn away but Rachel steps forward and wraps her arms around him, preventing him from budging an inch.

It's the first time they've embraced since the night Steve was arrested.

She's shaking when his arms gather her closer.

Or _he_ is. Danny can't be sure.

"All right. We'll go, Danny," she whispers brokenly into his ear. "We'll go tonight. But Grace will arrive at any moment, and…" Rachel moves her head back just enough that they can make eye contact. "Danny, you must tell her, at least explain enough that she understands it's not Stan and me doing this to her, that it's something you _want_ for her right now. That it won't be permanent, and that it's to keep her safe."

Rachel pulls away from him, crying unabashedly and trying to smile through it. "You've got to say good-bye to her, Danny. Alone."

Just then, the front door opens and Danny hears the sweet, angelic voice of the most beautiful, perfect child on the planet call out, "Mom! Is Danno here? His car's here!" Her feet pound into the parlor and she cries, "Uncle _Steve_!" and barrels into Steve's arms. He lifts her easily, holding her tightly and turning around so she's facing away from her obviously distraught parents and stepfather.

Rachel's eyes meet Stan's across the room, and quietly they move toward the foyer as Steve looks over Grace's shoulder at Danny, and makes a face that Danny thinks might just be his undoing. Because it's a face that looks very much like guilt, grief, pain, sadness, and everything else Danny is also feeling, all jumbled together.

"Grace, darling," Rachel says as Steve lowers the girl to the floor, "your father must speak with you in private. Stan and I will be upstairs if you need us, all right?"

Grace nods, and she's no dummy…she can see her mother's been crying. Danny watches her carefully note the expressions on the faces of each and every adult in the room after Rachel gives her a quick hug, then takes Stan's hand and disappears up the large staircase with him. Danny supposes he should feel so proud of his girl for somehow having been born with his cop instinct where people are concerned, but right now he can't muster up enough pride to beat out the anguish firmly rooted in his belly.

Steve looks at Danny, who nods just a little because yeah, he _does_ need to be alone with Grace when he does this. So Steve nods once in return and is out the front door and to the Camaro before Danny can even blink.

"Danno?" Grace asks, voice already sounding unsure. Frightened. Everything it should never be.

"Got to talk to you, Monkey, and we don't have a lot of time, okay?"

Grace nods, her backpack sliding to the floor as Danny returns to the couch, sits down and motions for her to come to him. She does, hopping up on his lap and looking into his eyes. "What's wrong?" she asks.

How is Danny going to be able to _do_ this? _How_?


	18. Chapter 18

"Grace," Danny begins, stops, takes a deep breath. He has to forge ahead. Has to play like Nike and Just Do It. Has no choice. Has little time. _Has_ to, to keep her safe. "You and Stan and your mom and your little brother are going away for a while."

Grace frowns. Twists her head a little. "You mean, like a vacation?"

Danny bites his lip, fights back tears, _think like a cop, Danny, come on_, and asks, "You ever hear Stan or your mom talk about Las Vegas?"

She nods. "Yeah. I think Stan has a new project there. They were talking about it when I was playing with Charlie and they thought I wasn't listening." And Danny smiles at her, because from the moment she'd seen him she'd thought the baby looked like a Charlie and so she'd called him that and everyone else had started calling him that but Danny, whose animosity toward Stan had kept him calling the kid Stanley, Jr., only now maybe he really _wasn't_ a Stanley, Jr. Maybe he _was_ a Charlie. And _maybe_ he was a Williams.

Only Danny doesn't have the time to go down rabbit holes right now, doesn't have time to worry about whether Charlie's his or not because either way, he'll be safer away from Danny just like Grace will. Maybe he'll find out. Maybe he won't. What's important right now is that both kids _live_.

"Well, Stan wants to go check the project out," is how Danny chooses to continue, "and—"

"And he wants us to go and you don't want me to leave," Grace finishes for him.

"What?" Danny blurts out. "No. No, I…" God, how much to tell her? How much to say in order to make sure she understands that he actually _wants_ her to do this, but not so much that he scares the crap out of her? "Monkey, I told your mom and Stan that I _want_ them to take you to Las Vegas."

This makes Grace frown.

_Not handling this well, shit_, he thinks. "Grace, your Uncle Steve, Uncle Chin, Aunt Kono and I, we found ourselves some pretty scary bad guys," he says, deciding a lighter version of the truth is the only way to go. It always has been with Grace, so why change that now? "And until we catch all these bad guys and put them in jail where they can't hurt anybody, it's better if you and Stan and Charlie and your mom aren't living in Hawaii."

Ever the logical child, Grace asks, "How long will it take you to catch them, Danno?"

Danny shakes his head, his immediate thought being _maybe never_ and he quashes that back down mentally with Steve's size eleven combat boots because hey, what better way to stomp a thought out of existence, right? "I don't know, Grace. I honestly don't know. But you're all going to leave tonight, and you'll be safe there, okay?"

"Are you coming?" is Grace's next question. Danny's silence and the fact that he can't keep looking at her before she's even done asking makes tears fill those big, brown eyes he loves so much. "Daddy?" she says, voice small.

"I have to stay here and help. I can't just leave all the bad-guy catching to Uncle Steve."

A tear spills out onto Grace's cheek. "Because you're his backup?" she asks.

Danny smiles. "Yeah, honey. Because I'm his backup."

"But…" Grace wipes her tears away. She's trying so hard to be brave, but in spite of the fact that he hasn't said one word about the very real danger, the only thing that would ever prompt Danny to even _think _about what he's doing right now, Grace is both smart enough and intuitive enough…not to mention having seen that her parents had been crying…to know she's not getting the whole story here. "But how long, Danno? When will I see you again?"

And of course Danny simply doesn't _know_.

"It's like the Newark airport all over again," she whispers, and then the tears come in earnest and she wraps her arms around Danny's neck and Danny chokes out a sob because he remembers all _too_ well the damn Newark airport and how he almost couldn't make himself let go and how Grace cried and cried and it all just comes back in a rush and he squeezes her tight.

"No, baby. This is me saying I want you to go so you're safe. We'll try to catch the bad guys as fast we can, but I can't do that if I'm worried about you and Charlie and your mom and Stan. Do you understand?" he says, pulling away, letting her see with the wetness on his cheeks that he's hurting, too.

"I'm scared for you," she says. "You came all the way here from New Jersey because you didn't want to be so far away from me."

"That's right. I did. That's how much I love you."

"But if you want me to go far away, that means you could…Danno, what if you…I won't be here to take care of you if you get _hurt_!" she wails, launching herself against his body so hard that it wedges him into the corner between the back of the couch and its arm, and he wraps his arms around her so, _so_ tight and holds her as she cries, and as he cries right along with her.

"I won't get hurt," he manages to choke out. "And if I do, I have our _ohana_ to take care of me until you can."

He just holds her until it seems she's all cried out. He doesn't know how long it's been, but he knows he's got to go, got to get them all out of here, send them to the airport. "Gracie, I came here to keep Hawaii safe because it's where you were going to be living," he says, pushing her back enough that he can wipe the tears from her face and force a smile. "I have to keep trying so you can come back here to all your friends and to this house, and so we can be together again."

"But you could come with us," she says and yeah, that's his girl, looking at all the possibilities at such a young age.

"I could, but like I told you, Uncle Steve, well, he can't do this alone, and if I come with you, then you and I will be afraid for him because we won't know if he's okay, right?"

Grace thinks about that. Then she comes to a decision and nods. "I'll call you every night."

Danny shakes his head. "No. Not for a while. I'll call you when it's safe for me to call you, Grace. Okay?"

She's practically exhausted herself, so all she can do is nod with her eyelids half-closed and her bloodshot eyes screaming out to Danny silently yet never so loudly as before how much she loves him.

"Danno loves you. Don't you ever forget that." He chokes on the words, can't do it anymore, stands up and sets her on the ground. "Now go upstairs and pack your stuff, okay?" She nods. She turns to walk away. "I love you, Grace Ann Williams," he says, and the tears are there again, dammit, and he can't stop them.

She stops. She turns to look back at him. Her own tears are back. "I love you too, Danno," she says.

Then she lets out an agonized wail, takes off for the stairs and he hears her pounding up them and he has to get out _now_ he has to _go_ he just _can't_ and he sprints for the front door, gets hold of the knob, stops when he feels a hand on his shoulder, turns to find Rachel. Her eyes are dry, but sad, and she looks for all the world like she used to when they were fighting as the last ribbons of their marriage were being shredded all around them. Defeated, yet trying to be strong.

"I hope you don't think my asking about what would happen in the future was…I didn't mean to imply…" she begins, but her voice trails off and she shakes her head.

"No, Rach."

Because Danny understands, as much as he had wanted to hate her so much for filing the petition, for wanting to take Grace away from Hawaii…from him…he knows that she truly loves Grace, that she wants what's best for her, that _any_ custodial parent has to be sure when it comes to stuff like this. He can't fault her for thinking ahead, as she must, for wondering what the future will hold in the wake of being told to get out of the state because being near Danny's too much danger for all of them right now.

He smiles at her, cups her cheek in his hand. "You're being her mom." He shakes his head when he realizes a gut-deep truth. "I can't imagine anybody else I'd trust with that more."

She fights it, she fights it so hard, but in the end her tears are flowing freely as she wraps her arms around him, squeezes, holds him tight. "Please come to back her, Danny," she whispers in his ear and Danny can hear the implied _us_ and knows right there in that moment that no matter how bad they are together when they try, no matter the fact that she's married to someone else, no matter the fact that he's got this niggling question in the back of his mind about Charlie, the fact is that Rachel still loves him.

And in spite of himself, he'll always love her.

Maybe the family moving to Vegas wasn't only about Stan's project. Maybe it was about Rachel needing to get away from Danny because it was the only way she could keep from diving into the same mistakes with him all over again.

He tightens his hold around her for just the fraction of a moment in time, just enough to try and convey that as he says, "I will. As soon as it's safe, I will."

She releases him.

He turns and opens the door.

Takes one last look at her over his shoulder.

One last look up the stairs, where Grace is probably in her bedroom crying right now, with Step-Stan doing his best to comfort her.

He turns and walks out.

Closes the door behind him.

Leaves his daughter.

He stands in front of the door for a few seconds…minutes…hours…hell, who knows? Then he looks up to find Steve leaning against the Camaro's driver-side door, arms folded over his chest, looking like maybe he might've been engaging in some unmanly behavior himself, as bloodshot as Danny can tell his eyes are even from a dozen feet away.

Danny thinks he might break now. Maybe completely. He might, as he starts walking toward the car, just start having little pieces, little chunks of his body, mind, heart and soul fall away, leaving a trail between his baby girl and his partner that even _they_ may never be able to put back together again.

He gets to the car. Stands there in front of Steve. Hears the question asked.

"Are you absolutely _sure_ about this?"

And Danny had promised he'd never lie to Steve again. "No," is what he says, voice shaking like it doesn't know how to work right, finally looking up to meet Steve's eyes.

It seems like an eternity of reading messages, sending silent signals, trying to tamp down Steve's demons and guilt at the same time he finds he's got very little left inside him to fight _anybody's_ demons with right now. An eternity until Danny finally whispers, "Get me out of here, please," because he can't stay here knowing Grace is just inside, knowing he could run back in there and hold her again, inhale her clean, Grace scent and feel her loving him so much.

"Now, please," he practically begs and doesn't care what it sounds like, doesn't care when Steve physically pulls him to the passenger side of the car, gently pushes him down into the seat, actually tucks his legs in for him, puts his seatbelt on, treating him like he's a small child or maybe just like he's a man in shock or simply incapable of anything anymore. Doesn't care because right now, at this very moment, as he forces himself to look up at the front door of the Edwards home, he knows that he may not see Grace for a long, long time.

And so at last, as Steve starts the car, drives it around, goes through the open gate…turns onto the street…at last, Danny breaks.

Quietly, without words, without a touch, without anything but his solid presence there behind the wheel, Steve just lets him.


	19. Chapter 19

Danny's pretty sure he hasn't cried this much since Rachel left him and filed for divorce. At least, his sinuses and itchy eyes seem to be saying as much. He should be embarrassed, he supposes, being how he just lost his shit completely in the car with his partner _right there._ But he can't bring himself to care about what it looked like, because Steve seems to understand that when you're talking about Grace, all bets about what a manly man you are, are off.

Grace, his baby…while she'd understood logically that Danny wanted her to go with Stan, Rachel and the baby for their safety, had cried harder than Danny had ever seen her cry. Not because she had to be away from him for a while, though she wasn't happy about that, but because she was scared to death for her father's life.

Come to think of it, Danny's scared for his life, too. Scared for Steve's life and Mary's. Chin's and Kono's. Malia's, Max's, hell, even Doris's. He heard the love in her voice on that phone call just as well as everyone else had, and in spite of the fact that she, in essence, screwed everyone from Steve's dad to Steve and Mary themselves over six ways from Sunday, Danny's realizing that he's basically doing exactly what John McGarrett did: sending his little girl far away in order to protect her.

And that if push came to shove, and the only way Grace and the Edwards' could truly be safe, was for Danny to no longer exist…he would do the same damn thing Doris had done. As a father, a father so smitten by his little girl he can hardly see straight around her, well…he really does get where that's coming from, CIA or Navy or Yakuza notwithstanding.

But most of all, right now, he's scared for Grace's life, and so here he is sitting in the passenger seat of his Camaro while Steve drives them…quite honestly, Danny doesn't know where because he's trying to keep himself from just wanting to die right here and now. He's so spent; there's just nothing left inside. Nothing but an aching head, an empty hollow in his body from neck to waist, and sinuses that feel like they're about to explode.

"You can still catch the flight," Steve says quietly as he makes a careful right turn.

Danny just shakes his head, out of words just as much as he is out of emotion.

He knows he's got to be freaking Steve out right now. Hell, he's freaking _himself_ out. But he's so tired. So goddamn tired. Always fighting, always swimming upstream, it takes its toll. Even so, the fact is that Grace is alive, that soon she'll be way safer than she ever could be here, and Steve even phoned someone he knows in the Vegas CSI office asking them to keep an eye on the Edwards family, to make sure nobody comes after them.

Danny's grateful. He is. But he's also—

He looks up when he hears the sound of the ocean. It's late afternoon, it looks like, and they're parked at what doesn't seem to be a parking lot in front of a deserted beach, so much as it is maybe a place where a road used to be before the sand claimed it for its own.

"Where are we?" he manages to ask.

"I used to come here as a kid," Steve says as he cuts the Camaro's engine. "When I wanted to be alone. Mamo showed it to me; it's the same place he always comes when _he_ wants to be alone. Come on."

McGarrett and his non-answer answers. Danny finds it hard to muster the energy to undo his seatbelt, but he finally does as Steve opens his door and holds out his hand.

"Not a girl," Danny grouses, swatting Steve's hand away. His partner steps back as Danny heaves himself out of the car. "Why are we here?"

"Come on," Steve says.

Danny just shakes his head because when McGarrett doesn't want to spill, there's no making him. He shuts the car door and follows Steve onto the beach. He can't even bring himself to rant about the copious amounts of sand he'll have inside his shoes _and_ socks as a result.

They trudge down the beach, hidden from the road that brought them here by a thick grove of trees. After about five hundred feet, they finally stop. Danny looks up and sees a small cottage butted up against the tree line. The building appears to be only big enough to be a single room inside. It's weathered by the salty air and frequent rains, but it looks well-tended and sits about two feet off the ground on wooden stilts.

The front door of the cottage opens and Danny sees Mamo appear with the same smile he always gets when he sees Steve. "I need to tell Mamo what's going on," Steve explains to Danny. "You are going inside to rest while I do."

"Rest?" Danny asks. "Rest?" he repeats. He's confused.

"Yes. Take a nap. Sleep. You're _exhausted_, Danno. If we're really going to do this, I need you alert. So…rest."

Well, shit. Danny can't really argue with that. So he uncharacteristically _doesn't_ and heads for the front steps just as Mamo comes down them. Mamo places a hand on his shoulder, squeezes, and then keeps going toward Steve.

Danny makes it up the steps.

He walks inside.

It smells like Heaven must smell, his oatmeally brain tells him, but he can't really place why. Maybe some Hawaiian incense or something.

It _is_ one room, as he suspected, with a small twin bed in one corner, a small pot-bellied stove in another corner, a hand-hewn wooden table with two chairs in the middle and a hand-woven rug covering a good two-thirds of the floor. The walls are covered with what Danny figures are probably old Hawaiian artifacts and pieces of art, and he takes his shoes off, takes his socks off, swipes the sand out from between his toes, and makes his way to the bed.

He should be asking Steve how Chin, Kono and Mary are getting on at HQ. He should be asking what Steve thinks their next move should be. He should be calling his daughter one more time while he still can before she's gone.

But he can do nothing more than sit down on the edge of the _really_ soft twin bed, fall back, slide over enough that all of him is on the mattress, and close his eyes.

* * *

Danny's got no idea what time it is when he forces his dry-tear-crusted eyelids open, rubs at them blearily and still can't focus his eyesight for shit. He can tell it's dark out, that's about it. A few seconds more of rubbing his eyes and finally he's able to open them and actually see something more than indistinct blurs and blobs.

"Hey."

Even though the word is softly spoken, it still makes Danny start. He knows it's Steve, doesn't know why he's so jumpy and then thinks, _Oh, yeah, you're in danger from everyone who hates McGarretts, that's why._

"Here."

Danny sits up, finds his partner standing next to the bed, takes the bottle of water he's being offered. "Thanks," he says and hates the raspy sound of his own voice. He opens the bottle and downs half of it gulp after gulp after gulp. Finishes. Recaps the bottle. "Time is it?"

"Eleven. Grace's plane left Honolulu half an hour ago, but she said she left something in her room for you."

"She called?" Danny asks, now wide awake and wanting to yell at Steve for not waking him.

Steve shakes his head. "No, Rachel texted your phone." Steve waves it in the air.

"You turned it back on."

Steve nods. "But it's off again. All our phones are. Chin got all five of us two throwaways each."

Danny swallows as he watches Steve place his old phone into a drawer of a dresser he hadn't noticed when he'd first entered. Then Steve turns and hands him a burner, which Danny slides into his pants pocket as he gets to his feet.

"Mary's outside on the beach with Mamo. Chin and Kono are making the rounds at everyone's places getting clothes, toiletries, the whole nine. They're also bringing Malia back here, and they found out Max is in Boston for a conference, so for the moment he's all right."

Danny blinks, still a little asleep and a lot in need of the coffee he can smell and see sitting in a pot on the counter of a sort of half-kitchen in another corner of the one-room cottage. "We staying here or something?"

"The four of them will stay here for at least the rest of tonight, then we'll figure out the best place to hide out. But you and I have to be somewhere."

"Where would that be?" Danny asks, watching as Steve pours two cups of coffee.

"Halawa," Steve says. "We're taking Wo Fat out."

Danny feels the icy hand of fear grip his chest. "Are you out of your _mind_?"

"Danny, he's the only chance I have of finding out where my mother and Joe are. Given his ties to all the places Joe kept moving Mom to, he's got to have _some_ kind of ties to the locations Joe knows to go. At the very least he can give us their coordinates and we can check them out."

"Steve, didn't you _listen_ to what Joe and your mom said? They want you to _stop_. You're going to get yourself _killed_ if you put yourself in league with the devil!"

Christ, what the hell does Steve think he's _doing_?

Other than, at that precise moment, handing Danny a delicious cup of fresh Kona. As Danny takes his first blessed sip, Steve explains.

"I'm sure Wo Fat knows everything that's been going on. Being in solitary doesn't keep him from running whatever show he was running before he let me bring him in. I need to find out what other strongholds he's got in other countries besides Japan and North Korea. I need to go to every safehouse Joe was using, and I'm telling you, Danny, I don't fully buy that Wo Fat's just out to kill my mother to avenge his father's death. I think there's more to it, and I've been sifting through those files your friend Mandy got us…" He stops, looks at his partner, and his eyes go sad. "I'm sorry about her, Danny. I'm sorry about what happened to her."

Danny shakes his head. "Thank you, but you're off your rocker." He takes another sip of the coffee and seats himself at the table. Steve soon follows suit. "Even if Wo Fat wasn't torturing you to find Shelburne with the intent of killing her once he did, the fact is that he _hates_ you, Steve. Whether it's you personally, your mother, your father, Joe, the Yakuza…whatever the fuck it is, he _hates,_ and he's proven he has no qualms in killing anyone who gets in the way of whatever his agenda is. He killed the goddamn Governor of _Hawaii_, for God's sake, and what about Laura Hills and Victor Hesse? Shot Jenna in the head right in _front_ of you! You think you'll be able to keep him reined in long enough to wear him down and find out what you want to know? Guys like that will _die_ before they'll tell you anything. Doesn't your highly classified SEAL ass _know_ that?"

And then Danny just plunks the mug of coffee down onto the table because _Steve_, _Jesus_.

"I have to try, Danny," Steve says and his voice sounds so small Danny just looks at him like he's not sure Steve spoke at all. "Other than what Mandy gave you, and what we already know as fact, all we have is speculation. How am I going to find my mother? How am I going to keep her alive?" He stops, takes a drink from his cup, sets it down. "What if Joe _is_ my father, and I don't get a chance to…"

Steve's head drops into his hands. His fingers pull through his hair, one hand then scrubbing down his face, over the day-old stubble he's got going on. He looks like he's completely at a loss for what to do next now that Danny's sufficiently questioned his plan to get Wo Fat out of prison.

"Let's go talk to him," Danny says. "Let's go to Halawa, but not to take him out of there…just to talk to him. But let's get straight how we're going to play it before we go in. He's too damn smart, Steve, for us to do anything other than follow a script in there. He may not know that we know who Shelburne is…and we don't want to tip him off."

Steve looks up at him through his lashes, sighs, nods, drains his coffee. Danny empties his cup, too. It makes them both jump to their feet when the cottage door slams open and Kono comes racing in.

"Kono?" Steve says, by way of asking what the fuck.

"It's Wo Fat!" Kono pants, chest heaving from running hard and fast. "We just heard on the police radio in Chin's car that he killed four guards and escaped!"


	20. Chapter 20

Mary stays with Mamo at the cottage while Chin and Kono race to Halawa to find out in person what the _hell_ happened. How one of the most dangerous criminals they've ever housed inside those walls managed to get out in _spite_ of the fact that they were fully aware of, and had taken steps to guard against, their newest resident.

Steve and Danny are racing along the H1 headed for the Consulate General of Japan on Nuuanu Avenue right there in Honolulu. Because Steve's immediate thought is that Wo Fat might seek refuge there, and he's barreling along the freeway at over one hundred miles per hour with lights and sirens going, to do his damndest to make it to the front gate before Wo Fat does.

HPD's on their way to the Consulate, too, with orders to surround the entire perimeter, remain on U.S. soil, but stop Wo Fat if he tries to get onto what is technically Japanese soil some other way than by knocking on the front door and saying hello.

"Does the governor know what's going on?" Danny asks, adrenaline pumping through his veins more out of fear of Steve's attempt to outdo Speed Racer than anything else.

"I haven't been in contact with him. It's just one more person, Danny, who's at risk if he knows _anything_." Steve takes the Pali Highway exit, the few cars on the road at this time of night luckily pulling off to the shoulders just in time to let the Camaro through.

They make a hard right onto Pali Highway, another hard right onto Vineyard Boulevard and then a tire-squealing right onto Nuuanu Avenue. They re-cross the H1via overpass and blow through the red light at School Street, one half-asleep driver nearly T-boning them in the process.

The flashing lights of HPD squad cars tell Danny they've reached their destination a little further along before Steve screeches to a halt, blocking the Consulate's primary driveway. The two get out of the car, Steve jogging up to a Lieutenant who's currently talking to the Consulate's night guard.

Danny looks all around, takes in the sort of plain-looking two-story white building with its flat roof. There are only two cars visible in the parking lot beyond the gates that sit further back in the driveway past the guard shack. A low fence that wouldn't be hard for a guy as nimble as Wo Fat to vault over with hardly the blink of an eye is really all the protection the property has. Danny wonders, as he moves forward to join Steve, Lieutenant Kāne and the guard whose name plate reads YAMAMOTO, why the hell it's all so open. There's only so much protection the _aloha_ spirit will give you, even in Honolulu.

"—inside the Consulate?" Steve is asking.

"Right now, there is only the skeleton night crew," Yamamoto replies in a thick Japanese accent. "Six people and one inside guard, Officer Watanabe."

"Look, we need you to allow HPD inside to search for Wo Fat," Steve says, but the guard's already shaking his head before Steve can pull a photo up on his burner phone.

"I am sorry, Commander, but that is not possible without a call to Consul General Kamo for approval."

"Then call him," Steve says, pointing toward the guard shack not two feet away. "And while you're doing that, I'll get Governor Denning on the line."

Yamamoto nods once and turns to do just that, while Steve dials Denning's private line from memory. "He's not going to be happy," Danny says, just for the sake of having something to say because right now his head's spinning and he's trying to look everywhere at once to make sure Wo Fat doesn't somehow get the drop on them. "You really think he'll come here?"

"Not with HPD crawling all over it, not now," Steve replies as, apparently, Denning answers the phone. "But he could be here already."

Danny moves away from Steve, jogs down to the sidewalk and hangs a left. Most of the Consulate's grounds are actually down along this way, with a second driveway gated at the sidewalk. The property extends all the way to Kuakini Street. Danny motions for a couple blue shirts to follow him and leads the way, jogging to the corner and left onto the sidewalk lining Kuakini.

He comes to a stop and looks across the street at the homes opposite the Consulate. He turns and says to the two female officers, Smith and Nahm, "Set up roadblocks two blocks out in all directions. I want every one of these residences, and all buildings within that two block radius, searched top to bottom, methodically. Call in day shift if you have to, get Wo Fat's mugshot from Booking and make sure everyone's got it front and center."

"Yes, sir," Smith says and the women are both on their phones and quickly heading around the corner.

Steve rounds that same corner looking twelve kinds of scared until he gets eyes on Danny, then relief sets in. "What're you doing?" he asks, jogging up to his partner.

"I'm getting HPD to set up a perimeter, two-block radius, and search every nook and cranny inside it. I'm betting if Wo Fat's not already on the grounds, he's somewhere in the area watching and waiting for us to clear out before he makes his move."

Steve nods. "Good thinking. Lieutenant Kāne managed to get the Consul General on the line with Denning. They're working out the specifics for us to be allowed into the Consulate to search and what we can or can't do if Wo Fat really _is_ in there."

"Kamo's going to let us actually search the whole place?"

"Don't know yet," Steve replies, both of them scanning up and down the street as HPD begins slotting their squad cars into place on either end of the street. "But I'm not waiting around for a bureaucratic green light."

"Of course you aren't," Danny says like it's a given because hey, this is Steve, so it is.

"Here," Steve says, and only then does Danny realize Steve's carrying two bulletproof vests, and handing one to him.

Danny takes it, puts it on, slides his badge off his belt and into its spot on the vest's left shoulder. "So I think he's holed up in one of these buildings around here," Danny says, waving at their general location, "and you think he's inside the Consulate."

Steve nods curtly.

"That mean we're splitting up?" Danny asks.

Steve looks down his nose at him, then gets that half-smile on his face and says, "We tried that already. Didn't work."

Danny snorts because yeah, Steve _would_ joke about that at a time like this. "All right. Consulate it is. Any ideas on how to get in without every person inside seeing us and alerting Yamamoto?"

Once again with the smile, and without even having to say a word, Danny knows Steve's got a plan. When his partner turns and hops the fence right next to them without so much as a warning, Danny rolls his eyes because "_This_ is your plan?" and then follows him into the fray, as he always does.

It's only once they're in the parking lot and past a bit of covered parking that Danny sees there are actually _two_ large, white, two-story buildings on the Consulate grounds, along with a handful of small outbuildings, a tennis court and a large expanse of lawn that butts up against a grove of trees at the rear of the property.

Steve's making a beeline for the second building between the front one and the back lawn. They skirt it around to the back, keeping close to the structure, until they're emerging on the other side where there's a garage right in front of them and the back corner of the larger building to their left.

Steve's looking kind of funnily at the garage, and Danny soon sees why: it's also two-story, with the top of it having curtain-covered windows as though it's a living space for someone. When Danny stops right next to his partner and peers up at the second window from the left along its eastern side, he sees exactly what caught Steve's eye.

There's a faint light that looks to be coming from a flashlight, moving from the front of the second floor toward the rear. Steve motions for Danny to go to the right. He nods, palms his weapon, and waits until Steve heads around to the front of the garage before jogs to the back.

There are no windows at all on the rear half of the garage, either first or second floor, and no movement on the tennis court or anywhere within his line of sight. Danny circles around the northwest corner of the garage, only to find that Steve's right there on the western side standing in front of the only door in the structure other than the front one used for vehicle entry.

"We should—" Danny starts to say, but is cut off by Steve.

"You _are_ the—" Steve says, but Danny holds up a hand.

"Do _not_ say it," he whispers, and Steve grins at him like the loon that he is.

Steve reaches out and tries the doorknob. Of course, it's locked. A curtain is covering the window so they can't see inside. There isn't a sound to be heard save the faint voices of HPD and probably Japanese guards and personnel in the distance. Steve looks at Danny, and Danny knows that look, so he nods. He's ready.

All Danny can hope is that Wo Fat's the one inside and that he will personally get the chance to shoot the bastard where it'll really fucking hurt.

He knows, and is well aware _Steve_ knows, that if they _do_ find Wo Fat here, and injure him anywhere on the Consulate grounds, they are not going to get out of it as easily as they did the last time they had a run-in with a foreign country's soil in Hawaii. But they also know that if they just sit on their hands, follow procedure and let the red tape have its way, it'll hang them all in the form of Wo Fat being able to do what he pleases, when he pleases, from wherever he pleases, and Five-0 won't be able to do _shit_.

This is one of those times Danny's all in favor of _not_ following procedure.

So when Steve busts the window with his elbow, reaches inside and unlocks both the deadbolt and the knob locks, Danny's all-in. It's pitch black inside and neither of them have a flashlight. And in spite of the fact that Steve kind of gets off on being a big goddamn superhero all the time, he really _can't_ see in the dark, so the hairs on the back of Danny's neck stand on-end when they enter to find the shadows of two vehicles in the garage proper, and no visible way of reaching the second floor.

He strains his hearing, tuning out every ambient sound, even the sound of his and Steve's breathing, desperate to make sure they're not going to be ambushed, and hoping they don't accidentally shoot a groundskeeper or some other innocent soul.

There's a very soft thud from overhead, somewhere over the center of the garage. Steve moves around to the front of the nearest car, Danny moves around its trunk. They meet in the middle, between the first car and the second, both looking up.

His eyesight's pretty well adjusted to the gloom now, so Danny can _just_ make out the rectangular shape of what must be a trap-door entrance to the second floor. He reaches up, waving his hand around, and it bumps against a string with a metal ring at the end of it. He elbows Steve's arm. Steve reaches up and feels the string, too. He puts his hand over Danny's, tugs twice, gently, and Danny has about three seconds to try and figure out if he's supposed to know what the hell sort of Army code that particular gesture is when Steve yanks on the string – Danny's hand included – and something very heavy and very painful crashes down onto them both.

It's when Danny hits his head on the side of the car behind him as he's going down, that he blacks out.


	21. Chapter 21

When Danny comes to, it's to find that his head _really fucking hurts_, that same head being held against something that's hard and soft all at the same time. He can't help but groan as he opens his eyes against a bright light and hey, when the hell did it become daytime?

But it's not, he discovers, as he finally pries his eyelids open, only to find the hard-and-soft thing his head's being held by his is _partner;_ that the top part of his back is resting on Steve's thighs because the guy's kneeling next to where he fell with him pulled halfway up onto his own body. Danny _would_ roll his eyes, but that might hurt, so he doesn't.

The 'daylight' is actually the overhead garage light turned on, and he next registers many voices – not all of them speaking in English – very nearby.

"Danny," says Steve, looking upside-down in a sideways sort of way because of how he's got Danny propped up. "Welcome back. How do you feel?"

"Like you did something really stupid that got me hurt," Danny grouses, then groans at how speaking makes his head pound. "_Again_."

"I'm sorry," Steve replies and his face looks like he means it. Danny's quite proud of the fact that he's got McGarrett apologizing these days without any prompting. Of course, it would be better if he'd stop doing stuff that gets Danny _hurt_, but baby steps, right?

Danny struggles to sit up, with Steve's help pushing him a bit. "Thank you, and I accept your apology," he says quite purposefully. Steve smiles and that almost makes the headache worth it.

"EMTs are right outside the garage," Steve says, standing and pulling Danny to his feet. "Come on, they did a preliminary, but now that you're awake, let's get you checked out."

"What the hell fell on me?" Danny asks.

That nice, placid look on Steve's face disappears. Danny sees a good dozen HPD officers plus probably every Japanese official in the area are both inside the garage and out in the parking lot. Crime Scene techs are on-hand doing their thing and parked next to the ambulance is a meat wagon.

"Officer Yamamoto identified the man as Sho Ito. He's been their groundskeeper here for thirty years."

They reach the open doors at the back of the ambulance, an EMT stepping out and flashing a light into first Danny's left eye, then his right. "Are you telling me a dead body is what fell on top of me when you did your little wrist-flick thing and opened the trap-door without any actual communication that I would correctly interpret as, 'watch your head, Danno'?"

Steve gestures to the back of Danny's head. The EMT nods, starts feeling along the entirety of the area from the top of his skull to the nape of Danny's neck as Steve replies…hesitantly… "Yes?" This time Danny _does_ roll his eyes. The EMT – a pretty girl who's shorter than Danny by at least a couple of inches – smiles as she comes back around to stand in front of them. "What's the verdict?" Steve asks her.

"No concussion, though I did feel a small lump on the back of his head," she replies.

"I'm right here," Danny frowns, "and the lump's name is Steve."

Steve pulls Aneurism Face and folds his arms petulantly over his chest. The EMT chuckles and turns to grab something out of a nearby drawer just inside the back of the ambulance. "Here," she says with a big grin as she hands Danny a packet that says it contains acetaminophen, "take these."

"And call you in the morning?" Danny asks hopefully.

Steve ups the Aneurism Face a notch.

"Sure," she says. "Only you don't have my number, Detective."

With that, she closes the back doors, winks and heads around to the front. Within seconds the ambulance's engine is going and they're pulling away.

"Damn," Danny says softly, tearing the packet open and dry-swallowing the two pills he finds inside.

"Whatever happened to Gabby?" Steve asks.

Then both their eyes go wide. "Oh, shit," Danny says. "You think she could be in danger, too?"

Steve looks all around them. "HPD and the Consulate have this under control. After we found the DB, we were allowed a thorough search of every building. If Wo Fat's the one that put the bullet in the groundskeeper's chest, he either didn't stick around after or there's a hiding place even Consul Kamo doesn't know about." He turns back to face Danny. "You up to checking in on Gabby?"

Danny nods, winces at the burst of pain it causes to shoot through his brain, and heads for the front driveway with Steve by his side. "I can't believe I forgot about her. I just…shit," he says, scratching at the corner of his eyebrow.

His partner's kind enough not to make any comments about what that means in terms of where Danny's girlfriend rates on his scale of importance considering he _hadn't_ considered her in all this. That's okay, because Danny's mentally kicking himself – through the headache – enough for the both of them.

By the time they reach the Camaro, Danny's tried Gabby's home phone twice. He's just about to open a new call and dial her cell phone number, ready with any number of apologies for waking her at oh-dark-hundred, when a gunshot rings out. Had Danny not seen it for himself he wouldn't have believed it…but the bullet whizzes so close to Steve's head, the man ducking it just an inch as he pulls on the Camaro's driver-side door handle, that it literally splits a couple of hairs that're sticking out.

"Jesus!" Steve gasps, dropping and then crouch-running around to the passenger side where Danny's already crouched. He's touching the side of his head, but there's no blood.

Now Steve's in Oh-No-You-Did-_Not_-Just-Shoot-At-Me Mode, scooting to the rear fender of the Camaro with Danny right behind him, weapons drawn.

"Angle?" Danny asks.

"We'll have to check the bullet hole in the door to be sure," Steve replies.

Dammit all to hell. Another bullet hole in the car to be patched.

There's lots of yelling, with the Japanese contingent taking refuge in the closest building and HPD finding cover, all weapons drawn.

Except nowhere is a person other than an HPD officer with a drawn weapon. There are no civilians in sight, armed or no. Not on the roof of the building, not on the ground. Steve risks standing, with Danny giving him reasonable shit for making his melon a target again, but this time there's no bullet whizzing at him in response.

So Danny rises to his full height, and the men look all around them, turning in place to do a complete three-sixty.

A Japanese man dressed in a button-down shirt and dress pants emerges from the guard shack, where apparently he'd taken refuge. Or so they think, until Danny sees his hand pull something black out of his pocket. "Gun!" Danny yells as the man raises a pistol and aims it directly at Steve. "_Gun!_"

Half of the blue shirts on-scene plus Danny plus Steve fire at the man. Who also fires, just before he's hit and a few times after as he's on his way down.

Luckily, he misses hitting an actual live target. Hitting Steve. _Horseshoes up his fuckin' butt,_ Danny thinks as he and Steve run over to the felled man, find him with blood on his lips, eyes squeezed shut in pain. Danny kicks the man's weapon away. An HPD officer puts on a glove, picks it up and takes it for evidence as others gather round.

"Why did you try to shoot me?" Steve asks the man as he kneels on one side of him and Danny, the other. "Who put you up to it?"

The man blinks his eyes open and smiles, white teeth gone pink, outlined in red. And as his eyes are closing for the last time, he whispers, "Joe." Then his body goes limp, and he's gone.

Steve stares at the man's face. Looks up at Danny. And is as white as a sheet. Danny's mind is racing. Joe White? Why the _hell_ would Joe want _Steve_ killed? Danny thinks to himself, as he checks the dead man's pockets to find absolutely nothing in them, that if that's what this guy was trying to convey, then things just went from over-the-top-insane to what-the-actual-fuck territory in the space of a heartbeat.

Steve's already a few paces away, his back to both Danny and the dead man, when Danny finishes checking the pockets and leaves the body for coroners and HPD to deal with. Danny approaches him, cautiously circling him, because you _really_ don't want to startle an armed Steve if you can help it.

"Why?" is what Steve says when he sees Danny in his peripheral vision.

So Danny's got to do damage control here, because Christ, as if having everyone else in existence wanting Steve stopped isn't enough, the very idea that Joe White would actually have him taken _out_ to stop him from trying to find Doris is just…it's… "Steve, we don't know why that asshole said the name Joe, okay? Could've been in reference to Joe White, but maybe not."

Steve's giving him Disbelief Face in spades.

Danny spreads his hands out and shrugs. "Even if he _did_ mean Joe White, that doesn't mean Joe wanted you killed. It could just be that he was trying to tell you something important about…" Danny's voice trails off as Steve gives him that Yeah, Keep Trying look. "Maybe he was saying something about Joe being in danger, maybe Joe had a message for you." Danny sighs, rubs a hand down over his face. "I gotta tell you, I'm running out of 'maybes' here."

Steve, God, Steve looks _pissed_. "I can't stop now, Danny. Whether that man almost put a bullet in my head because Joe ordered it or not doesn't matter. What matters is that Joe and my mother are somewhere on this planet hiding out, my mother's life is in danger, and Wo Fat's not only murdered four prison guards and escaped custody, but now he's killed somebody right on Consulate grounds and gotten away."

"Steve, you don't know that the groundskeeper was killed by Wo—"

"Williams!" a voice yells. Both Steve and Danny turn to see who it is.

An HPD officer they don't recognize jogs toward them. "Officer Lukela." Off the strange looks they give him, he half-smiles. "Duke's son."

Danny feels a little bad that he didn't even know Duke _had_ a son, let alone one who was on the force.

"Dispatch just called out for you, says it's urgent, to give them a shout," Lukela reports.

Danny looks at Steve, watches him dial in to HPD's main dispatch line. When the call is answered, Steve says, "Yeah, this is McGarrett. You have something for us?" Then Steve makes a face and holds the phone out toward Danny. "They say it's for you only," he says.

Danny frowns and takes the phone. He's barely gotten it to his ear, and opens his mouth to say his last name by way of greeting, when loud shouting is heard from the rear portion of the Consulate's property. Without a word, Steve takes off. Danny curses, leaving the phone line open as he sprints after his partner.

"_McGarrett_!" an all-too-familiar voice hollers as they close in on the main Consulate building near the garage.

Steve and Danny skid to a halt and look up…up…up to the roof.

Dangling over the side of the roof, bound and gagged, is Joe White. And he's being precariously held there by the straining muscles of none other than Wo Fat.


	22. Chapter 22

Dozens of guns are now pointing up at Wo Fat…and at Joe White, by default. Joe looks to be unconscious, and is hogtied. Wo Fat's got a length of rope wrapped around his right bicep and forearm that emerges from the central knot bringing Joe's wrists and ankles painfully together behind his back. He's not only gagged, but the multiple flashlights shining upward reveal his head and neck are covered in blood and gashes.

"You were right to think I would come here," Wo Fat hollers down at him. "But it wasn't for the reason you thought!"

Steve's got his gun trained right at Wo Fat's head, Danny can tell from the angle. But the man's not stupid…Wo Fat's staying just far enough back that he'll be able to duck as he hears a weapon discharge. Danny is vaguely aware of someone yelling his name, but it takes him a moment to glom onto the fact that it's coming from Steve's cell, which Danny's still got in his left hand even as his gun – also firmly trained in Wo Fat's direction – is held in his right.

Danny whips the phone up to his ear. "Williams, we're in a situa—"

"_Detective,"_ the voice on the other end interrupts, _"it's about your daughter!"_

And suddenly Danny's no longer standing on the Consulate grounds looking up at Wo Fat holding Joe White hostage with Steve about to burst several veins next to him. His heart stops, his world is dead silent and all his focus narrows to the voice at the other end of the phone. "What about my daughter?" he asks.

"_Commander McGarrett had asked someone from the CSI office in Las Vegas to notify him when the plane landed and the Edwards family was safely off the flight. We just received a call from that office telling us there's no sign of the Edwards family and that, in fact, they don't even appear to have been _on_ the flight."_

"Danny?"

Danny is completely unable to move, but can feel Steve's looking at him. "You said they got on the plane," is how he responds to Steve saying his name.

"They did. Honolulu International confirmed it, boarding passes checked through and a flight attendant gave visual confirmation."

Before Danny can even come up with the multitude of what-if scenarios that are just waiting to play out in his mind's eye, Wo Fat hollers down, "I take it you got the news, Detective."

Danny drops Steve's burner phone, line to Dispatch still wide open, and aims right for Wo Fat's head, both hands holding tight to his weapon. "Where _are_ they?" he yells.

"Danny, what the hell?"

"Dispatch says your friend from CSI Vegas called. They weren't on the goddamn _plane_," Danny seethes, never taking his eyes from Wo Fat.

"I was inspired by your good friend Frank Delano," Wo Fat continues as Joe swings precariously from the rope the man's holding.

Steve and Danny spare a glance for each other, but they don't even have time to try and speculate because someone yells, "Back here!"

Danny makes a beeline for the Consulate proper back by the garage, not even looking to see what Steve's doing, not thinking about anything at all but _Grace. Rachel._ _Oh, God. Oh, God, oh, God_. He makes it to the eastern side of the Consulate building where three HPD officers are gathered and looking up. One of them's Officer Lukela, who gestures frantically toward the roof when he sees Danny running their way.

So Danny looks up and his heart plummets, stomach drops out, every cliché imaginable happens because what he sees is _impossible_.

Stan. He's tied exactly the same way Joe is, hogtied, gagged and unconscious. And just like Joe, he's being dangled over the side of the building. Only this time it's not a man holding him there. It's a woman.

It's Steve's _mother_.

"_Steve!_" Danny yells. Holy shit he cannot be seeing this he cannot be seeing this where's Grace where's Rachel where's Charlie where are they why is she doing this and, "_Steve!_"

His partner suddenly appears at his side like he teleported there and Danny sees him get eyes on what's going on, sees him go as pale as Danny's willing to be _he_ is right now because "_Fuck_!"

"Mom?" Steve whispers in disbelief. Then he yells out, "_Mom_!"

"I told you to stop!" is what she hollers in response. "I _told_ you to _stop_!"

"Let him go! Stan doesn't have anything to do with this!" Steve replies, eyes _huge_.

"You don't anything!" Judy…Doris…struggles with the rope she's holding Stan up by. "You don't know _anything_ about the truth!"

"Well, I would if you'd fucking _tell me_!" Steve practically roars.

Danny sees HPD moving around the front of the building, and he knows they're going to try to gain access to the roof. Then he turns to find that Wo Fat has brought Joe to hang off the corner of the front building nearest where they're all standing.

"You have a choice," Wo Fat says, sounding as sure of himself as ever. "Save Joe White and kill me, or save Mr. Edwards and your…" He hesitates. Grins like a Cheshire cat, clearly visible with all the lights trained on him. "Mother," he finishes.

"Jesus Christ," Danny breathes, not sure where to point his weapon.

"Or," Wo Fat continues and Danny's got laser focus on him now, "you can go for Option Number Three."

"Which is?" Steve hollers.

"There's an airport hangar that's scheduled to be demolished twenty minutes from now," Wo Fat replies. "We obtain transport to Japan directly from this soil, and these two people will be set free."

"Like hell!" Danny replies. "What's the airport got to do with you hanging people off the sides of roofs?"

"It's very simple, Detective," Wo Fat replies, somehow managing to sound conversational even though he's yelling to be heard. "A chopper here, for me to pilot myself and my protégé away," and at _that_, Steve is turning and looking at his mother with Oh-My-Fucking-GOD Face on full display even as Danny's miming the word 'protégé' because…_what?_ But Wo Fat's not done. "Then I call my friends from the air, and they remove the woman and two children currently imprisoned in that hangar before the wrecking ball hits." He gives an experimental tug on the rope holding Joe in the air before adding, "Anything happens to me, they die."

_Woman and two children?_ Danny thinks, feels his breath starting to come too fast. _No. Oh, God, NO._

"I don't understand," Steve breathes. "I don't understand." He turns to look at Danny, but Danny can't even…he can't _think_ because _GRACE_ and— "Danny, we have to get to the airport."

Danny whips his head around to look at Steve like he's lost his mind because maybe he has. "You stay here." This is Steve's _mom_, for God's sake!

Steve shakes his head, looks up at where his mom's got Stan. "Neither of those people are who we think they are," he says, voice made out of steel.

Before Danny can ask what the hell Steve's talking about, and before he can even figure out which way to move first, and before he can have a thought at _all_, Steve's barking orders to HPD officers left, right and center, and then there's the sound of gunfire and suddenly Joe just starts _falling_ and then the next thing Danny sees out of the corner of his eye is _Stan_ falling and his head whips left, right, up, HPD officers running to try and keep Joe and Stan from breaking their necks on impact and Steve's grabbing Danny's bicep and pulling him toward the front of the Consulate property. Danny glances up and sees Chin on the rooftop holding Steve's mother already handcuffed and just catches sight of Kono standing on the roof of the other building with Wo Fat nowhere in sight and "What the _fuck_?" he asks as he makes it to the passenger side of the Camaro.

"Get in," Steve orders in a clipped do-not-fuck-with-me-right-now tone. So Danny gets in, head spinning, mind racing, everything out of focus and yet sharper than ever if only he could find half a second to _think_, goddammit, because – "Danny, that woman isn't my mother."

Danny turns his head to stare at Steve, even as Steve starts the car, flips the lights and sirens on and floors it away from the curb headed, no doubt, for Honolulu International Airport. "What?"

"Didn't you hear how Wo Fat said it?" Steve asks him, voice dripping with something Danny can't make himself identify.

_But you __**look**__ like her,_ is what Danny's thinking, so he says, "Yeah, well, he was probably just trying to fuck with you."

"Or maybe for the first time he was telling me the truth," Steve spits out, taking a corner _way_ too damn fast and racing onto the H1 freeway. "Doesn't matter. She was holding Stan hostage. Wo Fat called her his protégé." His face is like stone as Danny stares at his profile from the passenger seat. "Far as I'm concerned, my mother died almost two decades ago."

Danny's having a real hard time processing, he just…Grace and Rachel and the baby, and… "What she said about Stan," is all Danny can think of to say in the moment.

"All that's important right now is us getting to Grace," Steve says. "I'm not even _thinking_ about anything else. HPD called Duke out of bed. He's the only cop I know for sure I can trust, Danny, so he's taking charge of the op here while Kono and Chin are hauling those four back to the palace. There's going to be half the force there keeping those bastards all on ice. Right now? It's Rachel. It's the baby. It's Grace." He punctuates each of those with a finger jabbing the air.

Danny nods, fear creeping up from his toes, burning like fire ants are eating at him from the inside out, up and up until he gets so light-headed he leans forward to steady himself with a hand on the dashboard.

"We'll get there in time, Danny," Steve says and damn if he doesn't sound certain. "You try Rachel's phone. I'm calling in backup."

Danny gives him a funny look because when does Steve call for backup, anyway, and then when Steve whips out his burner phone, Danny realizes he must've picked it up from where Danny dropped it on the ground. But when the phone gets answered and Steve responds with, "Yeah, Gutches, it's me," suddenly Danny knows _exactly_ who Steve's calling for backup.

He'll be _damned_. SEAL Team 9.


	23. Chapter 23

Danny's phone rings just as Steve's finishing telling Gutches where he needs their help - namely, Honolulu International. Danny opens the line, but doesn't answer with his last name because of it being the burner. He says simply, "Yes?"

"_It's Chin, Danny."_

"Chin, what the _hell_ did you guys do?"

"_Got wind of what was going down, got the drop on Wo Fat and Steve's mom. His_ mom_, Danny!_"

"I know. So you're taking them back to HQ?"

"_No. Wo Fat's going to the morgue."_

"Holy _shit,_" Danny breathes. He looks at Steve, who's eyeing him. "Wo Fat's dead."

And Steve looks like he isn't sure how he feels about that. Danny's not either, because there goes all their damn answers out the window. And there goes the desire he knows both he and Steve had to kick the man's ass themselves. Now all they've got is Doris AKA Judy McGarrett AKA – if Wo Fat was being truthful – his protégé.

"_Kono's pretty broken up about it. She swears she didn't go for a headshot, but he's got a bullet right between his eyes."_

"Chin, Kono's a crack shot."

_"I know, trust me. So does she. But we're having the ME standing in for Max do an autopsy right away, see if there were any other bullet holes. She says she was shooting for his shoulder."_

"Shit, man."

_"Tell me about it. But Danny, that's not actually why I'm calling. Dispatch has a call to put through to you. The caller says she's Rachel."_

"Christ, then have them put her _through_!" Danny pretty much bellows, startling even Steve, who usually doesn't scare so easily. He turns to look at his partner again. "Rachel's on to Dispatch!" he explains, ending the call with Chin.

Steve's eyes widen. Danny's phone rings again and he puts it on speaker. Steve cuts the sirens but keeps racing along the H1.

"_Danny?"_

"Rach! Where are you, where's Grace? Are you hurt?"

"_What? We're fine. Why do you think anything's the matter?"_

"Oh, my God," Danny whispers, literally deflating in his seat to the point where he nearly drops the phone on the floor. "Where _are_ you, they said you didn't get off the plane in Vegas!"

"_No, we disembarked before the plane took off. We were seated, but then Stan got a call and said we couldn't leave quite yet. I told him you were adamant about it, but he insisted we were in no danger and that we'd take the next flight. He put us up at the OHANA airport hotel, then left, saying he'd return shortly. But he hasn't returned, and for the past three hours he's not been answering his mobile."_

Danny just wants to slam his fist into Stan's jaw. And he knows if he'd not given Rachel the no-contact order, if he'd still had his own phone, he'd have known this _four hours_ ago.

"Rachel, okay, listen to me, we're on our way to the OHANA airport hotel." Danny looks at Steve to make sure he got it. Steve nods and takes the next exit off the freeway. "Lock the door, do _not_ let anyone in, I don't care _who_ it is. Not even Stan. Keep Grace and the baby inside, close the curtains, don't give anyone visibility into that room. What room is it?"

"_We're in 212, Danny, but…what's going on? Grace, honey, get away from the sliding glass. Here, give Charlie his bottle. Danny?"_

"Are the curtains closed?"

"_Yes, of course, it's still dark out, we've got them drawn for privacy."_

"Okay, now I need you to do something for me. I need you to tell me _exactly_ what Stan said when he made you all get off the plane. What his end of that phone call sounded like, if he spoke to anyone on the plane or in the airport, what _exactly_ did he tell you?"

It's quiet for a moment. Both Steve and Danny frown at the phone. "Rach?" Danny prompts.

Then there's muffled crying. _"Danny, I'm…I'm so sorry…"_

Danny closes his eyes. _Not Rachel, too. God please, not her on top of maybe Stan now and Steve's mother and Governor Jameson and just…no_. "Whatever it is, it'll be okay, all right? We'll work it out. But I don't want Grace hearing whatever it is you've got to tell me."

There's a sniffle, and then Rachel says, _"Yes, of course, you're right."_

"Okay, we're nearly there, now, do you have any luggage with you?"

"_No, it was already checked in at the counter. Stan didn't let us stop long enough to try and retrieve our bags. He actually had to get them to reopen the aircraft door to let us off."_

"So just what, the diaper bag, Grace's backpack?"

"_Yes."_

"What about a car seat?"

"_I have the carrier, but no base."_

Danny sighs. "Don't worry about it; we'll have a car seat. Have the kids ready to go." He looks at Steve. And God bless Steve for reading his mind.

"Kamekona?"

Danny nods.

"I'm on it." Steve whips out his phone and proceeds to make the call.

"Rachel, we're getting someone we know we can trust one hundred percent to take the kids where they can't be found by anyone."

Steve mouths, "Mamo's?" and Danny nods. Steve tells Kamekona where to be and to make it double-time _and _bring a car seat, hanging up just as they pull up to the front of the OHANA hotel.

"Rachel, we're here, we're on our way up, do _not_ come near the door until you hear my voice outside of it."

"_All right."_

The men take the stairs, race up to the second floor, throw the door open, check the signs in the hallway telling them which numbered rooms are which way, and book it down the very colorfully-painted hall to their right. In no time they're standing in front of Room 212. Steve taps gently on the door.

"Rachel, this is us. Steve and I are here, you can open it. I promise you it's safe."

But no sooner are the words out of Danny's mouth, no sooner is Danny hearing Grace's voice through the door saying, "Danno?" in a high-pitched voice, than the sound of a door slamming down at the opposite end of the long hall reaches their ears.

Both men's heads whip to the right to find two Asian men running their way holding automatic rifles that it looks like they're about to fire.

Danny's just about to yell for Rachel to _not_ open the door, but it's too late and she's got it open and Grace is barreling out of it right into Danny's arms. "Get back _in_!" Danny yells, lifting Grace and turning his back to the men as the first shot is fired. A bullet hits his vest in the lumbar area.

Danny grunts. _Fuck, that always hurts!_ Rachel shrieks. Grace screams. Steve shoves Danny with Grace wrapped around his torso back into the room, pulls the door shut, turns and starts firing. He and Danny are both still wearing their Kevlar, but Rachel and the children have _no_ protection against bullets. Danny shoves Rachel, who's holding Charlie, into the bathroom, puts Grace down and tells them to stay there and lock the door. He shuts it, hears Rachel click the lock and peers through the eyehole back at the main door.

Danny watches as Steve draws the gunmen's fire. Steve lunges for the end of the hall, tucking and rolling so that he lands on his right side facing the two men, and starts firing his own gun immediately. Steve looks satisfied after one particular shot, which Danny interprets as him having taken one of the men down.

The other man fires and Danny watches in horror as the bullets rake down Steve's vest from right shoulder to upper abdomen, taking his breath away. Just as he's finally getting it back, a man comes to a stop standing right over him, gun pointed directly at Steve's head.

And Danny's had enough. "Not on _my_ fucking watch," he mutters. He throws the door open, gun at the ready. It startles the man, who makes to turn around, but with a single squeeze of the trigger, Danny gets a headshot and the man drops to the light beige and now blood-stained carpeted floor.

Steve, still reeling from the bullets hitting him, blinks a couple times as Danny stays standing in the doorway to keep it open. "You hit?" Danny asks.

"Only in the vest," Steve replies, heaving himself to his feet and tugging a little at the vest for emphasis. "Boy, am I glad these work."

"You are an ass, shoving me in there and staying out here," Danny hisses quietly. "You could've just come in with me, what the hell would I do without you if you got yourself killed?"

Which, of course, gets the patented McGarrett You-Love-Me smile as Steve gets to his feet. Danny throws his hands up in the air.

"And then what, Danno, we would've climbed out onto the balcony and repelled to the ground with a baby, a civilian and a nine-year old girl?" Steve asks and okay, yeah, Danny does see the difficulty with that. "Point is," Steve continues, "we've got to get them out of here _now_. Whether Stan's in on the whole thing or someone tailed us here, the fact is, more of whoever they are could be coming."

Danny nods and both men holster their weapons. Steve stays positioned in the doorway to keep an eye on the hall while Danny goes to the bathroom door. "Okay, Rachel, we got them. And we have to get you all out of here _now_."

Steve places a call to Kono telling her what's happened as Rachel unlocks the bathroom door, peers out and then finally opens it all the way. "Don't worry about it right now," Danny hears Steve tell their teammate, and then Danny's got his Monkey in his arms faster than he can blink, and holds tight, resisting the urge to get all teary over the fact that she's there, she's safe, she's with him, she's_ okay_.

For now.

"Come on, Danny, Kono's sending HPD here to clean up," Steve says from the doorway. He nods his greeting to Rachel, who nods back.

Danny moves to the bed, picks up the diaper bag and Grace's backpack. He heads toward the door, tells Rachel, "Stay between Steve and me," and looks at Steve, who…and Danny can hardly believe this…takes the diaper bag and backpack and slings them over his left shoulder. Steve with a diaper bag.

Steve with a...

Danny blinks once.

Huh. There's something you don't see every day.

He pulls himself out of the momentary WTF moment to find that Steve's leading them to a stairwell a dozen feet down to the left of the room. It's not ideal, but Steve's taking point, with Rachel holding a remarkably quiet Charlie close to her chest in the middle and Danny carrying Grace at the rear. His gun is drawn while he's _holding his daughter_ and if that isn't enough to make him shoot first and ask questions later, he doesn't know what is. Right now the adrenaline's going, and it's all about listening for more doors opening or any other out-of-place sound.

"Close your eyes, put your head down," Danny instructs and Grace does exactly what she's told, bless his perfect, beautiful girl. She's not crying. She's not freaking out. Goddammit, he loves her.

Danny hopes desperately that she doesn't see the dead body on the floor as they skirt around him. Steve gets to the stairwell door, drawing his gun. He opens the door. Looks up. Looks down. Listens. Turns and nods at Danny. Danny nods back.

They enter the stairwell. It's only one flight down, but there's no way of knowing if the way will be clear of more men trying to kill them all or not. There's no way of knowing if Steve and Danny are going to get Danny's family…yes, _his_ family, _dammit_…out of there alive.

He just clings to Grace, watches their six, and prays.


	24. Chapter 24

To Danny's great relief, they make it out of the stairwell, through the lobby of the hotel and back out to the front where the Camaro still sits unmolested. Steve holsters his weapon, pulls out his phone and gets Kamekona on the line. "Where are you?" he asks as he opens the driver-side door and pulls the seat forward so Rachel can climb into the back.

Danny gets Grace into the back seat on the passenger side and is just sliding into the front seat when Steve does the same on his side. "Buckle up, Grace. Rachel, you too."

"But Danno, Charlie needs a car seat."

"I know, we'll get him one soon," Danny replies. Then to Steve, "Where's Kamekona?"

"He's meeting us, he's ready to go. I'm phoning Mamo."

And while Steve does that, as he's pulling away from the hotel, Danny half-turns in his seat and meets Rachel's eyes.

She looks _scared_. And it makes Danny swallow hard. Rachel has never looked scared, not really. Not when she said she was taking Grace and leaving back in Jersey. Not when she told him she was going to tell Stan she was having an affair with Danny, and going to leave him for New Jersey. Not when she was about to give birth to either of her two children.

But she looks scared right now.

"It'll be okay, Rachel," he says.

She doesn't respond, just averts her eyes, clings to Charlie, kisses the top of his head.

"Danno, what's going on?" Grace asks. Danny cranes himself around between the bucket seats so he can get eyes on her. She looks sleepy as hell, and has every right to be at five in the morning, for crying out loud, having been on the go since coming home from school the day before.

"You remember Kamekona, right?"

She nods.

"Well, a very good friend of Steve's named Mamo, and Steve's sister Mary, and Uncle Chin's wife Malia, are all hanging out at a pretty little cottage right on the beach. It's safe, and Kamekona's going to take you and Charlie there until we get all this fixed."

"You mean until you catch the bad guys?"

Danny nods. "The good news is we've got some of them already, Grace. But the bad news is, we don't have them all yet."

Grace looks at her mother. "So we're not going to Las Vegas?"

"Not right now, sweetheart. You must look after Charlie while you're at the cottage, can you do that for me?" And Danny's surprised that Rachel's so easily letting him and his partner call the shots. It's very telling…at least to Danny.

Grace nods. "I know how to change him and feed him."

"I know you do, you're such a grown-up little girl," Rachel says fondly, reaching across and taking Grace's hand. Then her eyes meet Danny's again.

"Okay, here we are," Steve says, and Danny rights himself in the seat to have a look.

They're on a compressed sand road between what appears to be two warehouse properties, complete with the ever-present shipping containers and no cars yet in their parking lots as dawn breaks to their right. At the end of the road is a wide-open expanse, and right before that stands Kamekona next to his white Jeep.

But Kamekona's not alone. There are two women with him, one older and one younger. They look vaguely familiar to Danny, but he can't quite place how.

"That's Kono's mother, 'Ilima, and Kono's older sister, Kunani," Steve explains and now Danny understands – it's the family resemblance. "They're completely trustworthy. I told Kamekona to call them in because he, Mamo and Mary don't have a clue about babies, and I'm not sure if Malia does."

"You know, you actually have really good ideas sometimes," Danny remarks as he opens the door. He doesn't see it, but he's pretty sure Steve's shooting him a dirty look.

The hand-off goes pretty well, all things considered, in spite of the fact that Charlie lets out a wail that silences the morning birds and insects instantly as soon as he gets a good look at Kamekona. While Kamekona's got his Jeep, the women are going to take Grace and Charlie in their sedan, complete with car seat. Steve explained how to get to Mamo's on the phone, so Kamekona will lead the women and children while Steve and Danny will keep Rachel with them and head back to HQ, is how they work it all out.

And so it goes, with Danny saying good-bye to his little girl for the second time in less than twenty-four hours…albeit moderately less painfully than the first time…and sitting quietly in the passenger seat as Steve steers them toward HQ.

"Danny," Rachel says from her spot behind Steve. "There are some things I must tell you before we reach the palace."

And Danny swallows hard because he's been quiet specifically to put this off for as long as possible. Whatever it is, he just _knows_ it's going to hurt. Hurt him. Hurt Grace. Hurt Charlie. Maybe hurt Steve. Maybe everybody.

He twists in the seat to better look at her. She's not meeting his eyes.

Not good.

"Do you recall the night of Steve's arrest, how I insisted to you that we had to leave _that_ _night_ for New Jersey?"

Danny nods. "That was when you told me you were pregnant." He resists the powerful desire to add, "with my child," and instead watches her carefully as her eyes dart everywhere then finally land on him.

"That wasn't the only reason I wanted to leave Hawaii so quickly."

Danny frowns. "Well, sure, you wanted to get away from Stan, your marriage was over—"

"No," she shakes her head, eyes looking so sad as they cast downward to where she's actually wringing her hands in her lap. She takes a deep breath. She looks up. She opens her mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. At first no sound emerges, but then she speaks. "I was told if I didn't get you and Grace out of the state before dawn the next day, we would all be killed."

Danny's eyes dart to Steve, who's giving him a wide-eyed look in response. Then Danny looks back to Rachel. "Who the hell told you that? Who was trying to get us off this island?"

"Get _you_ off the island, Danny. Grace and I were of no consequence to the matter except to be used to remove _you_. He knew Steve would confront the governor. He knew, and he had a plan, but he didn't want you around to stop him from going…" Her voice trails off. Tears fill her eyes, spill over and run down her cheeks. "I had no _choice_, Danny! If I hadn't tried to get you away, we would all have been killed! I had _Grace_ to think of, and the baby—"

Danny can _feel_ the tension rolling off Steve. "Who, Rachel?" is what Steve growls as he's eyeing her in the rearview mirror. "_Who_?"

She looks up at his reflection. "Wo Fat," she whispers. "Wo Fat wanted Danny out of Hawaii."

Before she can even finish her sentence, Steve's slammed on the brakes and they're skidding to a halt on the side of the road. Steve throws the door open, gets out, slams it shut, heads for the sidewalk and starts manically pacing, looking like he could spit daggers.

Rachel seems so very small as Danny unbuckles his seatbelt, climbs out of the car, pushes the seat forward and gets into the back, leaving the passenger door open. "Rachel, tell me exactly what happened." He turns to holler out the door, "Get your Neanderthal ass back in here so she doesn't have to say this twice!"

And is gratified that Steve does just that, climbing into the passenger seat and closing the door behind him. He isn't looking at Rachel, but at least he's there.

"Now tell us, Rach. What happened?"

She nods, tears having abated. She wipes her cheeks on the sleeve of her blouse as she begins. "I wanted to leave Stan already, even before I found out about the baby," she says. "Our marriage wasn't doing well, and you and I _were_ doing well. I just wanted to forget we'd ever split up, that I'd ever met Stan. See, I found out some things about his business dealings about six or seven months after we moved here. I overheard him on a call he'd taken in his study. And while I wasn't entirely certain who he was speaking with, I heard enough to know what they were discussing wasn't legitimate business-building. There was talk of payments to a man named Noshimuri—"

"Jesus _Christ_," Steve breathes from the front seat, hand running down his face. Finally he turns to look at her. "Stan was doing deals with Hiro Noshimuri?"

"Hiro?" Rachel repeats. "I don't know that name, but about three weeks after that, a man came to our home for a meeting with Stan. I was helping Grace with her homework in the dining room, but I heard Stan when he answered the door. He called the man Adam."

"Oh, my God, Adam Noshimuri was in the _house_?" Danny very nearly yells. He feels a hand on his arm and realizes Steve has twisted himself around completely, and is reaching between the front seat and the car door to touch him. Just fingertips to his forearm, but shit, Danny needs that grounding right now, and how fucked up is it that Steve is grounding _him_, when it's Steve's mother who appeared to be Wo Fat the Fucking Second just an hour earlier? "Okay," Danny breathes, then takes another couple of deep breaths for good measure.

Steve takes over, pulling his hand away but staying turned toward them. "Rachel, do you know what kinds of business dealings Stan had with Adam specifically?"

"No," she shakes her head. "He never discusses his business with me, but I do know that the Las Vegas project happened rather suddenly. I got the impression from the way Stan spoke of it that he wasn't altogether happy about it, yet at the same time was gloating about how it would make him a fortune if it worked the way 'he,' whoever 'he' was, said it would."

"What else, Rachel?" Danny asks, because he knows her far too well, and can see there's something more she wants to get off her chest. "Besides the fact that you did what you did to try and save our lives, what else is there?"

Rachel takes a deep breath, looks Danny in the eye, and whispers, "Please don't hate me."

Every muscle in Danny's body tenses, because anything that starts out with those four words is _not_ going to be anything good. "I won't hate you," he says evenly and damn if Steve's fingertips aren't right there back on his arm. "Tell me."

Rachel's eyes dart to Steve, then are back on Danny. "I think…" She stops. She takes another deep breath. "I think Charlie may be your son."


	25. Chapter 25

Danny is pretty sure everyone in the car has stopped breathing. It's not like it hasn't been on his mind, so he's not surprised about the possibility. He _is _surprised that Rachel actually _told _him. Finally he manages to swallow over the sudden dryness of his throat and say, "Charlie was too big when he was born to be mine, Rach."

Her lower lip is trembling. "I _want_ him to be yours."

Danny bites his lip, looks up at the Camaro's low ceiling, eyelids blinking rapidly, trying to hold it together. "I wanted him to be mine, too," comes out broken and there are Steve's fingertips on his arm again.

"He may simply have been large for how far along he was," Rachel says next, and sounds desperate to either convince Danny or believe it herself. "Stan…"

Danny's eyes snap back to hers.

"There's more." She shakes her head. "When Grace and I returned from New Jersey, I…Danny, I never told Stan of our affair. I didn't even tell him Grace and I were leaving Hawaii that night."

"What?" Danny breathes, because, "Are you serious?"

She nods. "When I returned home after meeting with you, he wasn't there as he was supposed to be. I waited as long as I could and attempted to ring him several times. Finally we had to leave or be late for our flight, so I simply collected Grace and our things and left. I decided I'd ring him the next day from New Jersey. But Danny, that's not the worst of it."

Now Danny just wishes he could crawl into a hole because there's only so much of this crap a guy can take in one sitting, you know?

Steve's fingertips stay put.

"The next day Stan rang me. I told him Grace and I were homesick and needed to visit with family. He asked when we were coming back and I told him I wasn't certain. The truth is I hadn't heard from you yet. I didn't know what had happened until I saw on the national news that Steve had been arrested for murdering Governor Jameson." Danny feels Steve's fingertips dig into his arm a little bit. It serves to focus his attention on something other than his own racing heart. "Stan asked me if I was leaving him, and _then_…Danny, he knew we'd been having an affair. He said he had photographic evidence of our being together when Grace was in school or with the nanny, meaning she couldn't be used as an excuse for what was in the photographs."

"He had us _followed_?" Danny asks. Jesus Christ, to know there's _blackmail_ material somewhere out there, holy _shit_.

"It would seem that way. I told him I was pregnant, and he asked if it was your baby. I said I didn't know." Rachel looks down at her hands folded in her lap. "After you shot him, when Rick had kidnapped Grace…later on in hospital, Stan told me he wouldn't press charges against you because he understood, and that he'd do the same thing if it was _his_ child's life in danger. He also said he didn't care whether or not the baby was his, but that I was to never breathe a word of the possibility to you."

Danny feels rage boil up inside him and can't _wait_ to get his hands on Stan. "That son. Of. A. _Bitch_," he seethes.

"When he first told me he wanted us to move to Las Vegas for the project, I fought it, Danny. I fought it so hard!" Rachel begins crying again and Danny can't help himself. He leans forward, away from Steve's touch, and gathers Rachel into his arms, rocking her gently. From his shoulder her muffled voice continues, "I didn't want to take Grace away from her school and her friends and all her activities here." She sniffles. "I didn't want to take her away from _you_, Danny."

"Hey, okay," Danny murmurs into her hair, closing his eyes and thinking that Christ, it's a good thing Stan's not here right now because he would shoot him in the _face_. "What else? What was it that made you agree to go when you didn't want to? Made you file that petition?"

Rachel backs away, takes a tissue that Steve produces from God-knows-where and offers her, smiles a small smile of thanks and wipes her nose and face. Danny feels like a fucking _bomb_ is about to be dropped inside the Camaro and wishes to _God_ he could somehow stop it.

"While he was still in hospital for his shoulder, Stan told me he'd had a paternity test done on himself and Charlie three weeks after he was born, but refused to tell me the results."

Danny blanches, because _he'd_ been considering asking for that exact thing based on his conversation with his own attorney.

"He said he had to get me away from you in order to keep me faithful, and when I told him that moving only meant you'd move right along with us to stay near Grace, that's when I discovered the kind of man I'd married, Danny. The kind of man who was helping raise Grace, who was now helping raise Charlie."

"What did he do, Rachel?" Steve asks, and it's the first time Steve's spoken in so long that it startles Danny a little and makes him look at him. He sees nothing but compassion on his partner's face, and how Steve can be so concerned with any of this shitstorm that's Danny's life right now, Danny doesn't know, but fuck if he isn't every shade of grateful that there is. "He threaten you?" Steve continues. "Danny? The kids?"

Rachel nods, says "All of the above, Commander," and Danny's stomach plummets. Jesus Christ. All along he's been thinking Rachel's being a Class A Bitch trying to take Grace away. All along it's _her_ he's cursing, and all along…if she's telling the truth…it wasn't her that wanted it any step of the way.

"I threatened to remain here in Hawaii with the children, told himthat he could move without us. When I did, Stan gave me two choices. I could agree to move to Las Vegas with him and both children, remain faithful to him and allow him to raise Charlie as his own son without question. If I did so, he wouldn't do anything about you continuing to follow us, and you would maintain your visitation rights until Grace graduates high school."

Steve's face is set into a mask of stone when he asks, "And what was the other choice?"

Rachel looks at him, then at Danny. "He said if I chose not to move with him, and attempted to remain here with Grace and Charlie, he would sue for full custody of Charlie, citing not only my infidelity with you, but also the times our lives have been placed in danger because of you, including the time you shot him. He would drag out all our dirty laundry, Danny, with the photos of us together as icing on the cake. He would sue for you to no longer be allowed the same visitation you have with Grace, that the visits would have to be supervised. I was fully under the impression that there were connections in the Hawaiian courts that somehow or other he could utilize to ensure he won. He would be able to take Charlie away from me for good, quite possibly taking away the time you have with Grace as well."

To Danny's surprise, before he can even react to it…because he _really really really_ wants to shoot Stan now, in a place that hurts like a motherfucker like his _balls_, maybe even gut him and then kick the living shit out of him for good measure…_Steve_ reaches back between the bucket seats, places his hand over Rachel's that are one atop the other in her lap, and says, "Nobody should be forced to make a decision like that." Danny turns and looks at Steve, but his eyes are firmly trained on Rachel. "My father had to make a painful decision once and I'm convinced it was under the same types of threats. Either send me and my sister away, or we'd be used to hurt him, hurt my mother, if he knew she wasn't dead. He had to give us up to try and keep us safe."

Steve pulls his hand away, turns around and gets out of the car, closing the door behind him. Danny reaches out, puts a hand on Rachel's shoulder. "That sonofabitch is gonna pay, Rach. If I don't see to it, my guard dog out there, will."

Rachel barks out a short laugh at his description of Steve, but shakes her head, tears flowing anew. "I'm so sorry, Danny, I've kept so much from you. I truly thought we could have a new start, but then…I was doing everything I could to keep you in Grace's life. Even if it meant tearing you away from Five-0, from everything you've built here. Everything you've _become_ here."

Danny can't bring himself to offer her physical comfort again, not right now, because he's too raw, too angry, and he doesn't know who to get mad at. He could get mad at himself for putting them in this position by having an affair with his married ex-wife. He could get mad at Rachel for not just telling him the _truth_, because he and Steve and Chin and Kono, they could've _helped_, they could've stopped Stan going any further than he already had a year ago, stopped the ensuing year of hell for Danny, for Rachel. Stopped the whole moving to Vegas thing. And to think, Danny had sent Rachel straight into Stan's plan to get them all out of Hawaii by insisting they leave for Vegas last night, thinking he was just keeping his little girl and his ex-wife safe. Doing exactly what John McGarrett had done, sending his children away…whether or not Charlie was his own was irrelevant; he was still a child and still Rachel's. And Rachel _knew_, dammit, even as Danny ripped his heart out of his own chest by forcing himself to say good-bye to Grace, she knew _all _of this and said _nothing_.

Danny doesn't know whether to hate himself or feel sorry for himself. He doesn't know whether to hate Rachel or pity her. He doesn't know whether to stick to the law and throw Stan in jail or just strangle him to death with his bare hands, consequences be damned. He figures, though, that Steve might have a notion to beat him to doing the latter, so he's probably well-advised to keep Steve _out_ of the same room as Stan at this point.

Stan, who right now is cooling his heels at Five-0 HQ along with Steve's mother and Joe White.

Danny looks up to find Steve standing in front of the Camaro watching him intently. So he gets out of the car, pushes the front seat back into place and just stands there looking right back at his partner.

"Okay, my problems tackled. Yours next," Danny says, trying for levity with an epic fail.

"I'm sorry," Steve says quietly.

"Why? For once, _you_ didn't do anything." Default to humor, because this hurts too goddamn much.

"Yes, I did. It was Wo Fat who got Rachel to think of some way to get you out of Hawaii, and he did it because he planned on setting me up to take the fall for Jameson's murder. If it wasn't for me, none of that would've happened to you, Danny. Thinking you were having another baby, something you wanted…" His voice trails off, he flaps one hand in the air like he just _can't_, and looks away.

Danny closes the door and moves around to the front of the car, keeping his back to the windshield because he knows Rachel can read lips pretty well. "I'm the one who couldn't keep my dick in my pants, Steven, and we aren't going to try to pretend we don't both know it. That would've happened with or without you or Wo Fat in my realm of existence, and we both know that, too."

Steve makes a face like seriously that was TMI, but Danny steamrolls ahead because right now he could give a shit about decorum.

"Yes, Wo Fat used Rachel to try and get rid of me so I wouldn't talk sense into you and stop you from confronting the governor, and Rachel chose to use her pregnancy to accomplish that goal. But nothing worked out anyway, because I didn't leave Hawaii _and_ I didn't stop you from confronting the governor."

Steve pulls a tamer version of Aneurism Face because Danny's knocking down his guilt-built walls and he hates it when Danny tells him he's not to blame for the world's woes. Especially when Danny's right.

"Steve, I couldn't face this without you, Chin and Kono. I need backup sometimes too, you know. So it's better you're all in my life than not right now, is what I'm saying."

Steve cocks an eyebrow, looks down his nose at him and uh-oh, there goes that stupid half-grin again. "Gettin' all mushy on me again, Danno?"

"Shut the hell up and get us to HQ before I show you how short people take down tall people." Danny makes an abortive move with his knee up toward Steve's groin and in spite of himself, Steve laughs out loud.

In spite of _him_self, Danny can't help but chuckle in return.

Maybe he's just getting used to everything in his world being fucked six ways from Sunday.

Or maybe what he told Steve really is true: maybe he _does_ need six feet of insanity in his sphere because right now, he thinks maybe that Steve the SEAL brand of insanity's all that's keeping _him_ from going just as nuts.

Danny's not sure what to say to Rachel when they get in the car and start heading for the palace again. So he just stays quiet, looking out the window as the sun rises above the horizon. Wondering about Charlie. Wondering about Rachel, and whether she's really telling him the truth here. Wanting to so desperately believe she is, but too burned by their history to just go on faith anymore.

Wondering about Gabby- "Oh, _shit_!" he exclaims, pulling out his phone.

Steve throws him a 'what?' look.

"Gabby!" Danny responds to the silent question. "I never got her when I was trying earlier!"

Steve makes 'Fuck a Duck' Face as Danny dials Gabby's cell phone number.

He's sure she must be all right. After all, the two have only been dating for a little while. They aren't living together, haven't really made their relationship public beyond Five-0 and anyone who might've been around any time she came up in conversation.

Anybody like Lori, who isn't there anymore, so it doesn't matter.

Anybody like Kamekona, who just likes to tease Danny in general but is no threat to anyone.

Anybody like Mary Ann, who caught him talking on the phone with her and asked him point-blank if they were...her words...doing the horizontal tango. (He hates to this day how red that friggin' question made him.)

Anybody like…Danny feels himself freeze as Gabby's cell phone goes to voice mail.

Anybody like Joe White.

Joe White was around quite a bit for a while. He'd heard lots of talk about Gabby, Grace, anything and everything Danny had ever spoken of.

_Come on, come on, pick up!_ Danny begs within the silence of his own mind. Gabby's cell phone goes to voice mail once again. He looks across the front seat at Steve. "She has a condo at Inn on the Park."

"Isn't that where Snorkel Hawaii is, where we took Grace that one time? On Ala Moana Boulevard?" Steve asks. Danny nods. Steve flips on the lights and sirens, whips out his phone and speeds up.

Danny keeps trying Gabby's office number, cell number, home number.

And Gabby keeps not answering.


	26. Chapter 26

"I didn't know anyone lived at the Inn permanently. It's where Stan's sister stayed when she visited," Rachel observes as the Camaro races along Ala Moana Boulevard.

"It belonged to Gabby's parents," Danny explains, and not for Rachel's sake, but because he figures Steve's wondering, too. "They owned a property investment and management company, and when they were killed in a car accident, she inherited everything. Decided to live in this condo."

Steve throws him a look.

Danny _knows_ that look.

"Her parents were into property investment," is what Steve says.

Danny nods once.

"They died in a car accident," Steve continues.

And now Danny's the one with a light bulb exploding over his head. His eyes widen as he recalls the conversation with Gabby about a month after they began dating.

"_Nobody was ever able to explain to me how their car exploded. The incline off La-'i Road wasn't that steep, and I don't know why Dad lost control to begin with."_

"_Could've been an animal in the road, maybe? He swerved to avoid it?"_

"_I've run through that and about a million other scenarios, Danny. None of it makes a whole lot of sense, though. They'd been on that road probably a thousand times or more in their lives. They were coming back from visiting my dad's sister, who had lived there since she left home."_

"Oh, my God," Danny breathes. Could it be _possible_?

"We don't know anything for sure yet, Danny," Steve says as he brings the Camaro to a screeching halt on Ala Moana Boulevard right in front of the No Parking sign. Their destination is twenty stories high, made of glass and concrete with metal balcony railings lining every balcony. There's a little convenience store on the first floor to the right of the main entrance, with the entrance to the parking garage to the left.

Danny and Steve get out of the car, and Rachel protests, "Danny!"

"Stay here. I'm locking the doors; lay down in the back seat so you can't be seen," Danny orders, then locks the doors and shuts the passenger door before she can say another word. He looks, sees she's doing as he asked, and races through the front glass doors after Steve. They double-time it to the elevator, where Steve jabs the Up button and looks at Danny. "Fourteenth floor," Danny says, drawing his weapon as Steve does the same. "Number 1402, left off the elevator."

Steve nods curtly. The door dings open. A woman and a little girl get out. Steve and Danny board. Steve hits the button for 14. The doors ding closed. The elevator starts going up.

"Steve…"

"I know. But we won't worry about whether Gabby's parents had anything to do with the Noshimuris or the Yakuza or anyone else until we've got her safely with us, all right?"

Danny nods, feels adrenaline pumping through his veins. Wonders about Mr. and Mrs. Asano, the parents he'd never met but had heard so much about from their only child. Successful in business, generous to a fault with charities throughout the Hawaiian islands. Stupidly rich, by default leaving Gabby equally so when they died unexpectedly.

In a car accident.

Same thing they'd thought Judy-Doris had died from.

Same thing Koji Noshimuri had died from.

How many were in bed with those goddamn people?

Or maybe the Asanos had simply been victims of _not_ wanting to give in to the Japanese mafia? Maybe they'd been killed because they _wouldn't_ turn?

"_I sold off the majority of the properties in the year after they died," Gabby said quietly one night as they were seated on a bench on the beach watching the last dying rays of sun disappear into the Pacific. "I never wanted to get into property management. I was the Hawaiian history nerd, but my folks always supported me in everything I pursued, even though they knew it meant I wouldn't take over where they left off."_

So maybe the Yakuza had gotten what they wanted after all. Maybe even Stan had had a hand in all of it, since Gabby's parents had died only the year before Danny and Rachel's messy divorce, and her subsequent hook-up with Stan that brought them all to Hawaii.

He's startled out of his thoughts by the elevator dinging and the door opening. He and Steve run down the hall to the left. It's the first door on the left side. Danny knocks. Tries the knob. No answer. The door's locked. Knocks again.

"Gabby, it's Danny! You home?"

Nothing.

Danny swallows hard and steps away. He knows what Steve will do, and isn't disappointed when the man backs up, lifts his foot into the air and breaks the door wide open with one good, solid kick.

It's handy having a Neanderthal animal along sometimes.

But Danny goes ice-cold when he takes point and enters Gabby's condo, gun drawn, both hands on it, looking every which way there is. Because her living room, where the door opens into, is completely trashed. Steve moves across the room, around desk drawer contents, an open file cabinet with its papers strewn all over the hardwood floor and a toppled bookshelf with Hawaiian artifacts, some smashed to pieces, under and around it, and into the kitchen.

Danny skirts around the overturned overstuffed chair, moves past the matching beige and pink couch with its cushions thrown all over the room, and steps over a pile of clothing at the front of the hallway that leads to the condo's bedroom, the room Gabby uses for her office and the bathroom.

He stops at the master bedroom doorway. Gabby's King-size bed with its all-white sheets and quilt is ripped to shreds, as though the intruder was looking for something in the mattress, maybe. He can't help but think of the first night he spent in that bed with her; the first time they'd slept together, period. But he squashes it down as Steve moves past him along the hall. Danny creeps into the room and over to the walk-in closet. The door is closed. He silently counts to three, opens it with his left hand and takes aim.

It's dark in there, but not so dark Danny can't tell there's nothing but piles of clothes and shoes and everything else Gabby had in her closet made a complete mess of. Danny heads back out into the hall, moves along, sees Steve in the bedroom-turned-office on the left checking its walk-in closet. Notes Gabby's computer is on, sees that Steve is taking a look in the closet, moves to the bathroom.

"Clear!" Steve calls as Danny slides open the shower and tub door to find the tub looking pristine and not hiding anything or anyone.

"Clear!" Danny calls back, holsters his weapon, heads back to Gabby's office. He finds Steve on her computer, looking at something on the screen. "Somebody get onto her desktop?" he asks, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice because _fuck_.

"Her or someone else, I don't know, but Danny, look at this."

Danny puts a hand on Steve's shoulder, puts the other hand on the desk, leans over and stares at the screen. What's on that screen appears to be a land deed for someplace called _Piuke One_. "What is that?" Danny asks.

Steve shakes his head. "I've never heard of _Piuke One _as a place, but I think it means something like Rare Land, if my poetic Hawaiian isn't too rusty."

"Rare Land," Danny repeats as Steve scrolls along the document. "According to this, Gabby owns it?"

Steve nods. "Yeah, and it's out on La-'i Road, right where it ends. It looks like it encompasses a good twenty acres, broken down into five parcels."

"La-'i Road?" Danny repeats. "That's where Gabby's parents died."

Steve looks up, face grim, just as his phone rings. He holds Danny's eyes for half a second more, then pulls his burner phone out of a pants pocket. "McGarrett," he says as he thumbs the call open.

Danny rubs his thumb and forefinger along his eyebrow and temple as he stands straight up and looks all around the office. Two more file cabinets in here have been rifled through, many of the native Hawaiian pieces art and decorations that Gabby's various shelves and walls displayed are irreparably damaged. He shakes his head. She'll be so upset when she sees this.

Assuming she's still—

"Danny?"

He looks down at his partner still seated in Gabby's desk chair, realizes he was lost in thought and shouldn't be right now of all goddamn times. Steve puts the phone on speaker, tells Chin to go ahead.

"_Dr. Asano just showed up here. She's a little freaked out, but she's going to be fine."_

"What?" Danny gapes openly at the phone now lying on the desk. "Gabby?"

"_I'm okay, Danny. I was asleep when they broke in, but I got away when they started tossing my office. I'm not sure they even knew I was home."_

"Jesus!" Danny breathes, feels relief flood him, and realizes only in that moment that yeah, his feelings for her run pretty damn deep.

"Do you know who they were?" Steve asks.

"_No, but they weren't speaking English. If I don't miss my guess, they were speaking Japanese. I didn't get a good look at them, I just got out of there."_

Danny just wants to wrap his arms around her. Hold her. Breathe in her scent. Oh, yeah. He has it _bad_. "Gabby, you...you did right by going to Five-0."

"_I remember you once told me if I ever got into trouble, to come here and nowhere else because they were the only people you trusted."_

Steve looks up at Danny, who looks away a lot faster than is necessary. "That's right," Danny says to Gabby as Steve picks the phone up and gets to his feet. God, but Danny feels so fucking vulnerable today and hates the feeling with every fiber of his being.

"_Guys, you really need to get back here. Joe and Steve's mom aren't talking, but Stan Edwards is singing like a bird."_

"Fucker," Danny spits.

"_Dr. Havershim, the ME filling in for Max while he's in Boston? He's got the report back on the bullet that took Wo Fat down."_

"What's the story?" Steve asks, Danny leading the way back through Gabby's condo toward the front door.

"_The story,"_ Chin says in that guarded tone he has that means they're not going to like whatever he's going to tell them, _"is that the bullet that killed Wo Fat didn't come from Kono's gun or any other HPD or Five-0 standard issue."_

"Then where'd it _come_ from?" Steve asks. They step into the hallway. Danny closes the door behind them.

"_It's the same kind of bullet that the man who shot at you from just outside the Consulate's guard shack was using: a thirty-caliber Luger."_

"Luger?" Steve repeats.

"_Yes, and the angle it came from…Steve, whoever fired that shot had to have been standing _directly_ behind Kono on the roof."_

"Jesus, is she all right?" Danny asks.

_"Shaken up at first. Pissed the hell off now,"_ Chin replies.

"That's our girl," Steve remarks with a proud smile.

"We sealed the place off way before Chin and Kono hit the roofs," Danny reminds them, locks eyes with Steve. And his partner nods.

"Which means the gunman has to still be on Consulate grounds," Steve concludes. "Chin, you and Kono stay with Joe, Doris and Stan, and keep Stan talking. Get on to Duke and have every single person who says they're affiliated with the Consulate checked out top to bottom. Get photos of everyone who's Japanese. I want them shown to Joe, my mother and Stan for IDs. Find out if Kono knows where Adam Noshimuri is."

"You want him brought in?"

Steve looks thoughtful. "Not just yet. He may be of more use to us outside than sitting in a holding cell. Danny and I are headed your way now."

"_On it,"_ Chin replies, and the call is ended.

"Steve, what the _hell_ is going on?" Danny asks as they practically sprint to the elevator.

"I don't know, but right now I see only two things are possible." The elevator arrives on their floor, dings and opens. They step inside. The doors slide slowly closed and Steve hits the button for the Ground floor. "Either someone wanted Wo Fat dead because they're on our side and think that was helping, or there's an even bigger fish on his food chain who got rid of him because he turned into a liability."

And Danny can't argue with that logic.

Only thing is, he also can't even begin to untangle the web that, it seems, has interwoven his life inextricably with his partner's to the point where it's almost comical.

Almost.

Except that people are dying because of it.


	27. Chapter 27

Steve whips out his phone.

"Who're you calling?" Danny asks.

"Gutches," Steve replies, dialing a number with his thumb. "I want to know if he found anything at that hangar Wo Fat tried to say Rachel and the kids were in."

Danny feels a shiver run up his spine at the thought of the three of them helpless like that, but shakes it off as the elevator doors open and deposit them into the lobby. He steps out first, hears Steve greet Gutches on the phone, and scans the lobby. He sees a flash.

Just a flash.

A flash Danny knows is a bullet being fired even as, in the slow motion way these things have of turning into when a cop's being fired on, the actual sound of the gunshot doesn't reach his ears 'til nanoseconds later.

Steve's head whips up at the sound. Danny's already turned, catching Steve on the way around as he leaps into the air and twirls like one of his daughter's fucking ballerina toys. Before Steve can drop the phone and draw his weapon, a swathe of bullets pelts across the Kevlar protecting Danny's shoulder blades, propelling his chest into Steve's face and knocking them both back into the elevator.

And the elevator, because it doesn't know anything different is going on, swishes its doors closed on them as they land with lots of grunts, _oofs_ and a few well-placed curses. They hit the wall first, where Steve's head slams into the railing, then crash down onto the floor.

Danny feels like someone just ripped his spine out. He can't catch his breath. Knows this feeling. Has been shot in the vest enough times, sadly, to know it all too well.

"Ow, _fuck_! Danny!"

And Danny wants to say, "Eloquent as always, McGarrett," or at the very least utter a "Fuck!" himself, but he can't because he can't catch his goddamn _breath_. More bullets pelt the closed elevator doors. Steve unceremoniously dumps Danny off him, face-down onto the floor of the elevator, leaps to his feet and punches the 20 button.

As the elevator begins to rise, Danny hears Steve barking at someone like the dog that he is, then hears a little silence, feels Steve kneeling next to him and touching _ow, fucking ow_ along his upper back, tracing the bullet holes, no doubt, then Steve's gone again and Danny feels the elevator lurch to a stop.

"Chin, we were just fired on in Gabby's condo building, one man, didn't see much of him other than to say he looks Japanese. Get HPD here now, seal off a three-block radius. I've got SEAL Team 9 on the way, Rachel's out front in the Camaro, Danny's down." A pause. "I think he caught them all in his vest, but get EMTs here anyway!"

With that, it goes quiet and Steve's kneeling next to him again and finally, _finally_, Danny finds he can take a deep, if shaky, breath. He shoves himself up on his left elbow, raises his head, looks left and sees big, scared eyes. He remembers those eyes from so many times. When he couldn't breathe because of sarin. When Mary Ann was kidnapped. When a case was going FUBAR and someone's life was at stake.

Big, bad SEAL with too many faces for even Danny to catalogue.

When Steve huffs out a laugh and ducks his head like he's embarrassed, Danny realizes he must've said that out loud. _He'd_ be embarrassed if he wasn't feeling a bit like a bulldozer ran over him at the moment.

"You're not hit, are you?" Steve asks, fingers poking and prodding along the edges of the vest at Danny's neck, then around by his shoulders.

"You've got your hands all over me, don't you know?" Danny grates out and there, at least he can speak again as he hauls himself to a sitting position.

Steve's phone rings and he rises to full height as Danny puts his arms on his drawn-up knees, hangs his head between them.

"McGarrett."

Danny listens even as he forces himself to breathe in…breathe out.

"Secure her and have Chin take her back to Five-0 with four HPD officers for cover; do _not_ let Chin into this building."

Danny presumes they're talking about Rachel, and wonders how the hell the SEALs got to Gabby's building so fast.

"I want a standard bottoms-up. He was still here shooting at the elevator doors not two minutes ago, so sweep it starting two on Ground, going by twos up each floor."

Danny looks up at Steve. Oh, yeah. Those damn bullets are going to leave a colorful line of bruises between Danny's shoulder blades. Fucking _ow_. "Bottoms up? That sounds painful," he jokes.

Steve looks down at him, doesn't miss a beat speaking, leans forward and holds out his hand. Danny takes it, Steve hauls him to his feet, steadies him with a hand on his shoulder.

"I need two new vests, bring us the Navy-issue ones," Steve continues as he removes his hand from Danny's shoulder and pokes a finger into one of the bullet holes. "These fuckers almost went all the way through. I want the better material."

Steve hangs up the call, his finger still probing one of the bullet holes. Danny makes a face, turns his head, looks up at Constipated Ferret Face (can ferrets even _get_ constipated? he wonders, but hey, it fits), and says, because he's cheeky like that, "You know, I'm not sure whether to be turned on or turned off by your fascination with my holes."

Steve freezes, looks at him wide-eyed, then bursts out laughing and jerks his hand away.

"That's more like it," Danny says. "For a guy whose melon just about got blown off, you were looking way too serious, my friend."

Steve rubs the back of his head, says, "Yeah, well, that might've been preferable to the headache I'm sporting courtesy of that railing."

"You hit it?" Danny asks, then remembers the flash of Steve doing just that on the way in and down. He forgets his own inconvenient pain, as he always does when someone else gets hurt, and moves around behind his partner, fingertips lightly pressing along the area Steve was rubbing. "Shit, you're gettin' a goose egg there," he says. "Sorry about that."

Steve flaps a hand in the air. "Headache's really better than…how'd you put it?...getting my melon blown off."

"This is true," Danny nods as he steps away. "Okay, so we're in a stopped elevator, with an armed bastard after us, and your SEAL buddies…how'd they get here so fast?"

"Gutches called Chin like I told him to once they got to the hangar. Chin advised him that Rachel and the kids weren't in the hangar, but Gutches and his team swept it just in case. It wasn't even scheduled to be torn down."

"So Wo Fat lied."

"As usual," Steve confirms with a grimace. "Once they'd established that, Chin told him where we were; he's got locations on our burners now that he's back at HQ. He sent Gutches to us, so the team was almost here when I phoned him."

"Okay," Danny says, clapping his hands together, "kudos to Chin. So now what?"

"Now we start this baby moving again. I want us to check out the roof; Gutches doesn't have enough men to get that far up for another twenty, thirty minutes, at least."

"The roof. What is it with us and roofs? Why are we always chasing suspects onto roofs?"

Steve just gives him a look as he releases the elevator from its stop. It lurches and continues to move upward.

"Okay, just for the record, partner, you get your hands on this fucker and want to hang him off the roof, you got a free pass from me."

"Why, thank you, Danny, that's so magnanimous of you."

"Did you just use 'magnanimous' in a sentence?"

Steve grins at him. "Been hangin' around you too long."

"You with the long words, me with the live grenades and trying to drown people. No wonder everyone thinks we're married."

"Yeah, only there'll never be alimony when we split up."

"We _can't_ split up. We've already established we're not normal in that regard."

Both men watch the numbers go up…17…up…18…up…19…

They draw their guns. Check them. Make sure the safeties are off.

"Also for the record, I do _not_ want to be a war widow," Danny informs him as the elevator reaches 20.

"Ditto," Steve replies as the doors open.

Danny pokes his gun out left. Steve takes the right.

Nothing.

They peek around the edges of the elevator. The hall is empty.

"Which way to the roof?" Danny asks.

"You don't know?" Steve whispers his reply.

"No, babe. Gabby and I haven't gone all the way with respect to roofs yet."

"Aw, that's just for us, huh, Danno?" Steve asks, but neither of them are just standing there as they mumble and whisper back and forth.

"Yeah, partner, that's _our_ special place," Danny says, turning around and watching their six as Steve leads them slowly along the hallway to the right of the elevator.

The elevator that dings as its doors swish closed.

"You think he's still here?" Danny asks.

"Got me," Steve replies.

"For better or for worse," Danny whispers. He doesn't look, but he's hoping he got some sort of nice face out of Steve for that one. Adrenaline's racing through his veins, the ache between his shoulder blades forgotten.

"Here, down here," Steve says. Danny turns, the two jog to the end of the hall, stopping at a door that is appropriate labeled ROOF ACCESS. Danny whips back around to watch the hall behind them as Steve tries the door. It's locked. "Too thick for me to kick down."

"The SEAL has his limits?" Danny asks incredulously, then literally rolls his eyes as Steve reaches into a cargo pants pocket and pulls out a _grenade_. "Seriously?"

"Be glad I'm well-armed," Steve says, unwrapping the tape from the top of the grenade, then winding that tape around the thin part of the doorknob and securing the grenade to it.

"You're _something_, I'll give you that much," Danny says, eyes still scanning the corridor, ears trained for anything that's _not_ Steve and his pet grenade. Christ, that man and his explosive devices.

"Okay, _go_!" Steve orders. They spring into action and run halfway back toward the elevator. Three seconds later, the door blows clean off its hinges, the sound of a grenade explosion practically deafening Danny.

Steve's phone rings. He grabs it, answers it, even as he's pulling his gun back out of its holster. "Yeah, that was me blowing the roof door. Danny and I are heading up there now. Anything?"

Another moment of silence. Danny peers toward the end of the hall as the smoke starts to dissipate. Has half a second to realize there's someone _in_ that smoke. Someone who's coming straight at them.

"Steve!" Danny yells, turning to find Steve stuffing his phone back into a pocket.

But this time, there's no open elevator to escape into.


	28. Chapter 28

"What in the name of all that's holy was _that_?" a voice yells.

Danny's fight-or-flight instinct grinds to a screeching halt. That voice doesn't _sound_ threatening. He turns and looks even as he and Steve whip out their guns.

"Identify yourself!" Steve orders, him staying against the wall to one side while Danny moves to the opposite wall, weapons aimed as the figure clears the smoke.

"Sam Clayton, Maintenance," the guy says, then sees the guns, the Kevlar vests, the badges prominently on display and stops dead in his tracks, arms raising slowly. "Jesus," he breathes.

"Five-0," Steve says, he and Danny moving forward, guns staying firmly in place.

"What the hell did you blow the door for, if you'd just asked the doorman, he could've given me a call on this here walkie-talkie," he indicates said walkie-talkie hanging from his belt, "and I woulda let you up on the roof."

"He does that," Danny advises as puts his gun away.

Steve shoots him a look. "Sorry," he says, holstering his weapon and closing the distance between himself and Sam. "We're looking for a man who appears to be Japanese, he's armed and dangerous."

A door opens nearby, and Danny turns around to see a Hawaiian male peeking out from the first door to the right of where they are. "Back inside, sir," Danny says, pulling his badge from the shoulder of his vest and holding it out. "It's safer if you just stay in your condo."

"Safer?" the Hawaiian man repeats.

Danny nods as he reaches the resident. "Please, just get back inside and lock the door."

"Little late for that," the man squeaks. Danny's eyes widen. He pulls his gun from its holster, motions to Steve. Hears Steve tell Sam to get the hell back to the roof access stairwell.

Danny sees Steve's got his weapon out again, too, and is headed his way. He nods at the resident, who Danny now sees is sweating profusely, with his eyes bugging out. Danny knows what that means, and when he glances up at his partner, he knows Steve's got it, too. But then Steve has to go and try those damn hand signals he's so fond of, and by the time the three seconds it takes for him to make them is done and Steve's sprinting for the roof access door, Danny figures he either just told him they were going on another terrifying petroglyph hike, or Steve's about to try and get to the balcony of this room from the roof.

Of _course_ he would think that's the natural thing to do. Freak.

"So," Danny says to the poor, frightened resident in the most conversational tone he can muster, "tell me, buddy, what's it like renting these things? How long you here for?"

The resident seems to be pretty damn smart, because he catches on and, steadying his voice, replies, "I'm only here while they're replacing the roof of my house. My daughter and wife are…asleep…right now, so please keep your voice down."

Danny interprets that as, the bad guy's holding a gun to the head of this man's wife, or daughter, or both, and _that_ just pisses Danny right off.

"Hey, what's your name, anyway, I hate talking to a guy when I don't even know his name. I'm Danny, nice to meet you."

"My name's 'Enakai. 'Alepo'i is my wife, and our daughter is Hiapo. She's only three."

Danny feels his anger build and silently urges Steve to hurry the fuck up and ninja his ass down onto these peoples' balcony toot sweet.

"I have a little girl, too. She's nine. Light of my life. Nothing like having a daughter, is there?"

"Nothing like it," the man agrees.

Then Danny hears a gunshot and breaking glass.

'Enakai yelps, whirls around. A woman screams. Danny shoves through the door shoulder-first, weapon drawn. A little girl cries out in a terrified voice.

A man dressed all in black, clearly of Japanese descent, runs straight for Danny, firing like mad. Danny shoves 'Enakai back toward the door as he spots a Hawaiian woman and girl fleeing down the hall and ducking into the first room on the right.

Danny does a tuck and roll, gets behind the couch as Steve comes leaping through what used to be a sliding glass door but is now a _shattered_ sliding glass door. Danny comes up firing at the gunman.

Steve barrels into the guy, knocking him sideways. The gun flies out of his hand. Danny gets to his feet, blood singing with excitement, fear, everything that goes right through the very core of your being when your life, and the lives of innocents, is in danger.

The guy throws a punch, catching Steve's chin, but Steve counters that by grabbing the man's hair and slamming his head down onto the hardwood floor once…twice…_damn, Steve's going to brain him_, three times.

And then like Danny's seen in probably every martial arts movie known to man, the gunman rolls his body from legs to shoulders, lurching his pelvis upward. It throws Steve off-balance just enough that the man flips him to the floor back-first, straddles him and starts pummeling him like he's training for an Olympic match.

Just as it looks like Steve might be down for the count, just as Danny's moved close enough to have the gunman's head right up against the barrel of his gun, Steve's knee comes up, pushing the man forward. Steve uses his arms and the leverage to flip the man over his head. The gunman lands on his back with a crash, smashing right through the glass coffee table.

In the blink of an eye, Danny's standing right over top of the guy, aiming at his forehead. "Just give me a reason, asshole," he grits out, eyes flicking to check Steve, seeing he's getting up off the floor with weapon drawn, then looking back down at their man.

"Ah, _God_," Steve says, rubbing his right cheek with the back of his left hand. "That's going to hurt for a day."

"I'll hold a bag of ice to it personally," Danny tells him as he pulls out his handcuffs as the gunman glares at him. "Roll over," he tells their prisoner, but the man defiantly continues to glare, remaining on his back.

Until, that is, Steve holsters his weapon, moves forward, growls, "He _said_, roll _over_!" and manhandles him into doing just that, jerking his arms closer together behind his back than is strictly necessary. Danny is satisfied with the hiss of pain he hears as he leans down and cuffs the guy's wrists.

Steve's back on his feet fast, gives Danny a look and says, "Book 'em, Danno."

"With pleasure," Danny says, hauling the guy to his feet by the handcuff chain. It causes him to grunt in pain and Danny remarks, "That's what you get for shooting me in the back, buddy."

Steve's on the phone letting Gutches and Duke know they've got the guy, and asking Duke to have a wagon take him straight to Five-0 HQ. Danny and Steve will follow in the Camaro, and he asks SEAL Team 9 to meet them there as well.

And so it is that they find themselves back in the Camaro at last, Danny with way too much on his mind to even know where to start. Every time he opens his mouth to comment on something, or speculate on something, he clamps it shut again because something else jumps to mind that's equally pressing, confusing or just plain annoying.

What an epic clusterfuck this is turning into.

He pulls out his burner phone and says to Steve, "What's Mamo's number?"

Steve rattles it off, Danny dials. Waits as it rings.

"_Hello,"_ a familiar voice answers.

"Hey, Mamo, it's Danny. How are the kids?"

"_That depends. Do you mean the ones under eighteen or the ones over eighteen?"_ Mamo asks, and Danny can hear Grace's shrieks and peals of laughter followed by adult laughter of both the male and female variety. He chuckles.

Then he hears a woman's voice singing softly and the laughter over Mamo's question dies as he listens. "Who is that?" he asks.

"_Oh, that's Mary singing Charlie to sleep over on the bed,"_ Mamo replies.

"You're kidding," Danny says, surprised. "Mary can sing?"

"_Sure, she can. Her mother sang like an angel. I suppose she inherited the gift."_

"Wow. I didn't know the McGarretts were a _Sound of Music_ spinoff." Danny glances at Steve and gets the Aneurism Face he was hoping for. He grins. "I'll have to get Steve to sing 'My Favorite Things' for us."

Mamo chuckles. _"Good luck. I don't think Stevie got that gene."_

"Can you put Gracie on the phone, please?"

The Camaro is just pulling into the palace's parking lot. The two of them get out of the car, watching closely as the driver and shotgun officer move from the front of the paddy wagon to the back, and knock on the door twice in rapid successesion.

"_Danno!"_

"Monkey! How are you, honey?"

"_I'm good! Kamekona said he could play hide and seek better than anyone, but I hid so well he didn't find me!"_

"Well, that's good, Grace, you always were a Master Hider," Danny says, frowning with the two HPD officers when they don't get a knock in return from the three officers that are in the back of the wagon with the prisoner.

Steve draws his weapon and moves closer to the wagon.

"Grace, I have to go, but you stay safe with Mamo and Kamekona and everyone, and you do what they say, you hear me?"

"_I will. Are you coming soon?"_

"Soon as it's safe to, baby, I promise. Danno loves you."

Danny barely waits to hear Grace say she loves him too before stuffing the phone back into his pocket, drawing his weapon and approaching the back of the wagon, where Steve and the other two officers are also standing with guns pulled.

They hear a thump from inside and all four of them tense.

Suddenly the vehicle's engine turns over, and as Danny and one officer run toward the passenger side, Steve and the other officer headed for the driver side. Before either set can reach the cab doors, the wagon burns rubber.

All four of them fire on it.

But they know the converted cargo van's bulletproofed.

Danny and Steve make to hop in the Camaro, but before they can even get the doors thrown open, there's a massive explosion and really, you know, these are becoming so commonplace in their everyday lives, it's little wonder they don't even flinch. They turn to look, and right there at the mouth of the driveway, they see all that's left of the HPD paddy wagon is a white-hot burning chassis.

Steve mirrors Danny's _Jesus Christ, what the fuck, there goes some possible answers_ face, both of them throwing their hands in the air in defeat, as Chin and Kono race out the front doors of the palace with several cops and other personnel on their tails.

When Danny meets Steve's eyes over the roof of the Camaro, he figures they're probably thinking the same exact thing: What. The actual. Fuck.


	29. Chapter 29

Steve wants Chin and Kono inside with the three people Five-0 is holding for questioning – he simply doesn't trust them to somehow _not_ break out, if someone on the team isn't watching. So HPD and Crime Scene take over, along with the ME, who says when he talked to Max yesterday, Max was _not_ happy about missing out on all the fun…which Danny makes a face about…and is therefore going to be coming back early.

So with Duke established as primary, a couple detectives Danny is pretty sure aren't on the take from his short months with HPD, and Steve's and Danny's statements given, it's now time for the partners to confront their pasts, their presents and their futures, which all take the form of one or more people inside the walls of Five-0's headquarters.

It's no surprise to Danny to find Steve hesitating outside the door that leads into the hall lined with their interrogation rooms. Danny's pretty damn hesitant, too. Chin approaches from behind, stops, looks at Danny. "I, uh…I kept Gabby and Rachel apart," he says. "Wasn't sure they'd met yet and didn't want to be the one to make it happen."

And Danny literally facepalms. Because while he's pretty sure Rachel's heard about Gabby from Grace, the fact of the matter is that the women have _not_ yet met. "Where are they?" Oh, Danny's not looking forward to this.

"We've had Gabby in your office since she showed up, and I put Rachel in Kono's office," Chin replies.

"You want some help with that?" Steve asks, and while he's looking a little smug and like he might enjoy whatever scene will be created by the inevitable meeting of the ex and the current, Danny can read the undertones that tell him Steve wants to put off talking to Joe and Doris.

But Steve knows he can't, just like Danny knows this is one thing he doesn't really need backup for. So Danny smiles a little, says, "I promise I won't let anyone blow the bullpen up, partner," and enjoys the small snort Steve lets out as a result. "But Steve," he says, joviality fading, "take it easy on yourself in there." He jerks his thumb in the direction of the interrogation rooms.

"Yeah. Okay," Steve acquiesces with a nod, and Danny wonders when his partner last slept, but knows Steve will not appreciate a Mother Hen, so lets it go. "You going to send Gabby to Mamo's?" Steve asks next.

"I think it's probably getting crowded in that little one-room shack," Danny says. "Any other ideas? I don't know how much Gabby's going to want to hang around here, especially when I make my move to choke the life out of Stan with my bare hands."

He feels a hand on his shoulder, turns to find it belongs to Chin and that Kono is now joining them. "I say Steve takes Joe, Kono takes Steve's mother and I take Stan. We recorded everything he's told us so far, Danny, and I think he was caught between a rock and a hard place in all this."

"Not with everything, he wasn't," Danny replies, grinding his teeth.

"Chill, _brah_, we got your back," Kono says with a grin. "Now go on and get World War III started, will you? We'll find a place for everyone that's safe, k?"

Danny chuckles, nods, watches as the three of them disappear into the interrogation room hallway, as the door separating it from where he's standing clicks shut behind them. Danny turns, runs a hand through his hair, takes a deep breath and heads for the bullpen.

With any luck, one of the ladies in question will be asleep so he can handle first one, then later on, the other.

However, 'luck' seems to be something that's a little questionable for members of the Five-0 task force these days, so Danny's not holding his breath.

* * *

Best to get it over with, right?

When Danny walks into the bullpen, nodding first at the three HPD officers guarding said area, he's making a beeline for his office. Out of his peripheral vision, he sees Rachel look up and eye him through the windowed walls of _Kono's_ office, and he figures, well, she's not making a move to get up, Rachel isn't, so he should be oka—

Gabby barrels into him, nearly knocking him over, arms tight around his chest, cheek on his shoulder and she's shaking a little…well, all right, she's shaking a _lot_, and sounds like she might be crying a little bit. Danny instinctively pulls her so, so close, one hand sliding up her neck into her hair; the other flat on her back, thumb rubbing small circles into the tee shirt she was apparently wearing when rudely awakened by intruders.

How it all could've gone so very, very wrong. If they'd known she was there, if they'd wanted to kill her, they could've done it so quickly, so easily. She would've been gone. Gone like a wisp of smoke in a stiff breeze. Snuffed out, that gorgeous smile and all that knowledge about Hawaii and everything she'd taught him, that she'd impressed upon his psyche about Hawaiian culture and ancestors and land.

The way she looked at him. The way she and Grace got along. The way she moved when there was nothing separating them but their own skin. Her sense of humor, her favorite chick flick she made Danny watch with her…anything, everything that they already were and all the things they haven't yet had a chance to be with each other. Just fucking _gone_, if not for the intruders for some reason not checking her bedroom; if not for Gabby having been smart enough and capable enough to get away without them knowing.

It all comes crashing down on Danny, how very different this could be right now for the both of them, so when she raises her head to look into his eyes and he sees tears slide slowly down her cheeks, he leans in and kisses her forehead…then rests his forehead against hers. Then, he captures her lips with his own.

Because he almost lost this, this woman who's somehow making him less angry all the time, who fits with him like a missing puzzle piece. He kisses her softly, gently, quietly promising a hundred things if they can ever get through this all, then pulls away, runs a hand down her hair. "I'm so glad you're okay," is what he manages to force out over the sudden lump in his throat.

"I was so worried about you," she says. "Who were those men, Danny? What did they want inside my office?"

Danny shakes his head. "I'm not sure, but it may have something to do with a document Steve found open on your computer."

She moves to his side and he puts his arm around her shoulders, moving slowly toward his office. "What document?" she asks, but then Danny remembers Rachel. He turns and oh, Lord, the look on his ex-wife's face. He just fucking kissed his _girlfriend_ in front of the mother of his daughter.

Ugh. Danny is a self-aware male who knows this is a major _faux pas_. Oops.

Danny pulls Gabby's head forward a little, kisses the top of it, and says, "Hang out in my office for a sec; something I gotta do."

Gabby nods, turns to see what Danny's looking at. "Who is that? I saw Lieutenant Kelly bring her in."

"That," Danny says, "is Grace's mother."

Gabby's eyes widen. "Oh," is how she responds.

"Just give me a few minutes?" Danny asks.

Gabby goes into his office without another word, but with a parting smile that tells him yeah, they're okay. Danny turns and walks to where Rachel is standing between the computer table and Kono's office door. "That must be Dr. Asano," Rachel says with a nod in Gabby's direction.

"That is precisely who it is," Danny responds, keeping his voice as businesslike as possible. "And no, I'm not introducing you."

Rachel's eyes flash. "I never asked you to."

"No, but you were going to, and now is not the time. Have Kono or Chin asked you any questions?"

"No. I've been sitting here cooling my heels and having to speculate as to the identity of the lovely woman in the office across the way, wondering as to the health and safety of my children and hearing explosions outside this building without being told a thing."

Oh, yeah. Rachel's pissed.

Well, you know what?

So the fuck is Danny.

"Okay, Rach. We're going to get some things straight right here and right now," Danny says, and no, he's not going to lose his temper, but he's damn well going to lay down the law because goddammit, where their current existence is concerned, he _is_ the law. He gestures to Kono's office. Rachel turns on heel, fuming, and enters. Danny follows, closing the door behind him.

"Right now," Danny says, "you are technically under arrest."

"_What?_" Rachel exclaims, and Danny knows any other man's petals would be wilting right about now. But not his. He's been through way too many knock-down, drag-out fights with this woman to wilt these days. "What on Earth _for_?"

"I'll tell you what for, Rachel," Danny says, "and I'll start with endangering the lives of minors in your custody. I'll go ahead and follow that up with conspiracy charges as related to Stan's business dealings, since you knew shit that you didn't tell anyone about, tack on a few charges related to lying to a police officer, and I can go _way_ back on those, no statute of limitations on 'em, and how about we round all _that_ out with something like accessory to murder and making false claims on official legal documents? Should I continue?"

The fact that Rachel is standing there with her jaw on the floor is only moderately satisfying, because Danny _doesn't_ want to charge Grace and Charlie's mother with anything, he _doesn't_ want to arrest her, but he _needs_ her full cooperation here, not the typical Rachel 'tude from years past.

"Right now, and for the foreseeable future, we are not ex-spouses. I am Detective Sergeant Daniel Williams with the State of Hawaii Five-0 task force, I have detained you for questioning, and it is my duty to wring every last drop of information out of you that I can where the Yakuza, Stan's business dealings, the Noshimuris, Wo Fat, the McGarretts and anything and everything else related to same, is concerned. You are a suspect and a witness, and for the duration you can consider both Grace and Charlie under the watch of Child Protective Services until it is determined that you either are or are not a safe harbor for them." Danny takes a deep breath, turns a complete three-sixty, runs a hand through his hair, and finishes with, "Right now, I _know_ you're not safe, and you do, too." He huffs out a breath. "And neither am I. But they _are_."

Tears well up in Rachel's eyes. But as much as that little twinge is still there, the one Danny always gets when he sees her upset in any way, he cannot let this interfere with something that could find him quite literally following through with at least some of those charges he told her he could hold her on. He has to think of the kids' safety, of Rachel's safety as a potential witness to multiple crimes, and of key information she may have that will help lead them to conclude this goddamn fucking _shitstorm_.

When Rachel sees, if Danny's not mistaken, that this time the waterworks aren't going to get her anywhere, she sinks into Kono's desk chair. She leans her elbows on the desk and puts her head in her hands. Danny sits down in one of the two guest chairs opposite her and leans his forearms on the desk.

"Rach," he says softly, and she looks up at him. "I don't hate you. I know you were put in a tough spot a few times, and above all, you are still Grace's mother. But I have a job to do, and I can't let our history, what was going on with custody, or any past feelings to get in the way of putting a stop to this whole thing."

She looks back down, not responding.

"If we _don't_ solve this, no one in any of our families will ever be able to stop looking over their shoulders for the rest of our lives. Is that the kind of existence you want for Charlie and Grace?"

After a moment, Rachel shakes her head 'no.' She pushes herself back from the desk so that she's seated fully upright. "What do you wish of me?"

And in that moment, Danny thinks it's the proudest he's ever felt of the woman he once loved like she was the most rare and precious gem on the planet. Because she's doing the right thing here, for her children, even if it means bringing herself down as a result.

"Stan's been giving Chin and Kono a lot of information. They recorded it. I'm going to have Kono come up here, show you the recording. I want you to add anything you can possibly think of to what he says. Tell her _anything_ that comes to mind, no matter how insignificant you think it is. She'll help with prompts at various points throughout his confession, okay?"

"Is it legal for me to watch another witness' confession?" Rachel asks.

Danny raises his eyebrows. "No. But it's not exactly legal for me to have your two kids squirreled away without you having a clue where they are, either. Never mind you using my daughter and your unborn child to try and help Wo Fat get Steve convicted of murder." Okay, maybe that was a little mean, but Christ. After two years with Steve, Danny's learned that sometimes, not going quite by the book is the only way to save lives and live to do it all again tomorrow.

Rachel nods. "All right, Danny. I'll do whatever I can. All I ask, is that you allow me to speak with Grace, and perhaps hear Charlie babble a bit."

"I'll have Kono put them on speaker for you when I send her up. All right?"

Rachel nods. Danny rises to his feet, moves around the desk, places a hand on her shoulder. "I will do everything in my power to protect the children and you. I make no promises about Stan."

She whips her head up, looks squarely into his eyes. "Stanley Edwards can go _fuck_ himself," she spits.

And Danny grins. Because he can't help the little lizard part of his brain that's damn happy to hear it.


	30. Chapter 30

Danny asks Officer Lukela, who's _still_ on duty and just entering Five-0's bullpen, to go to Interrogation and ask Kono to bring the recording of the Edwards confession up to her office. Lukela nods, says, "My father wanted me to let you know that Detectives Goh and Johnson are heading back to the morgue with the three men who were in the paddy wagon."

"We know who the victims were?" Danny asks.

"Cho, Kahili and Gables, five years or more for each of them."

"Shit," Danny breathes, swiping a hand across his forehead. "Goddammit, I hate it when it's cops."

"I have to tell you, Detective, half of my colleagues are blaming Five-0 top to bottom here. Not only are we out our own building thanks to it getting blown up by a suspect you four were chasing, but now cops are dying because of whatever the hell it is you guys are into."

Danny considers the younger Lukela's face. He _seems_ on the level, and like he's maybe not one of those blaming Steve, Danny, Chin and Kono for the actions of madmen. And Duke's the most righteous cop Danny's met in Hawaii to date, so his son ought to be good too, right?

Lukela smiles. "I'm not on the take, Detective, and no, I don't blame you. My father's had only good things to say about you, even if he does sometimes question your…unorthodox methods?"

Danny's relieved. One more person in their corner can't hurt. He smiles wryly, shakes his head. "Yeah, well, when you answer to a lifelong Naval officer, you answer to whatever rules he makes up as he goes," he quips.

Lukela laughs. "I'll get Officer Kalakaua."

"Would you stay down there in the hall, just to make sure no one tries anything funny? Steve and Chin are interrogating two other suspects, and there should be four more officers on-hand as guards."

"Will do."

With that, Lukela exits the bullpen and Danny heads to his office, where Gabby's seated on the couch. She gets to her feet as he enters, automatically walking into his arms. He just stands there and holds her. She feels so good, fits just right. He does _not_ want to lose this dammit, he's too far in to be able to just drop Gabby like yesterday's newspaper.

"Everything okay?" Gabby asks, leaning her head back enough that she can look into his eyes.

"Not yet, but we're working on it."

"You know, I've been thinking about the document you said you found open on my computer," she says, backing away a little, but still keeping her hands on his waist. "What was it, do you remember?"

Danny nods. "A deed for five parcels of land out at the end of La-'i Road. It said you were the owner."

Recognition from Gabby, her nodding as she says, "Yes, _Piuke One_. Remember how I told you I sold off most of my parents' land in the year after they died?"

Danny nods, moves Gabby back to the couch and sits down with her.

"Well, what I didn't tell you was that I sold every piece of it, except a couple of small condo buildings, to a very insistent investor who said he'd been after my parents for _years_ to get at some of these properties."

"Wait, you sold them all to one _person_?"

"Technically, one company," Gabby replies. "The first time you told me your ex-wife's name it didn't really dawn on me who she might be. After all, Edwards is a pretty common name. But the President and CEO of the company who wanted my land is Stanley Edwards, and if I'm not mistaken, your ex-wife is his _current_ wife."

Okay, now Danny's back to wanting to puke his guts out, because "Jesus fucking Christ," he curses, then glances at her. "Sorry."

She smiles. "Just because I'm not much for colorful language doesn't mean my dad wasn't. I've heard it all, Danny."

He grins sheepishly, then it disappears from his face. "You're telling me it was Stan's investment company that snapped up every single one of the pieces of property your parents owned."

Gabby nods. "All but the two small condo buildings in Pearl City, which went to two separate private investors, and of course, _Piuke One_. I kept the land out on La-'i Road for a couple of reasons. First, that was where my Aunt Leila lived, on what's technically Parcel Number Two. Second, all five of those parcels have been in our family for generations, dating back to when Hawaii was still ruled by kings and queens. And third, all of Parcels Four and Five, and about three-fourths of Parcel Three, are considered sacred to those who protect the ancient ways. In fact, remember when you told me about the historical battle reenactment you witnessed after you found one of the participants dead?"

"Yeah, I remember," Danny says with a nod. "That was the first time I knew Mamo was part of that whole Hawaiian historical thing. He was in full-out ancient costume and everything, it was weird."

"Well, that land they were using? It belongs to my museum," Gabby tells him. "And I've been negotiating with the museum, and Mamo, for them to actually start doing some things like that on _Piuke One._ Mamo's very interested in the more sacred aspects of that land."

"Wait, you know Mamo?" Danny asks and yeah, he knows Oahu's a small island, but good God, how small can a place get?

"Not well. I've met with him four or five times. His commitment to the preservation of Hawaiian history, culture and language are fierce. I guess I feel like he's a kindred spirit."

Danny thinks about Mamo, and what he's doing right now taking Mary Ann and Charlie and Grace into his hideaway. How Kono's mother and older sister have given up whatever their usual daily lives involve to help with the children. How Chin's bride is hiding out there, too, undoubtedly doing what she can to help with the kids and probably worried sick about her husband.

Then Danny wonders how Steve's doing interrogating Joe White, who most probably isn't talking at all. Wonders how Chin's doing with Stan, wonders how Kono's doing with Judy/Doris. Wonders if he should be doing something other than sitting here with his Gabby. Doesn't want to be anywhere else, though, and reaches out to pull her into a hug.

She laughs quietly. "What's _this_ for?"

He buries his face in her hair, breathes in her still sleepy-smelling scent and whispers, "I love you." Feels every syllable of what he's said. _Means_ it.

Her breath hitches. She leans back, eyes shining, a huge smile on her face. "I was wondering if you were ever going to say that."

He grins, ducks his head. "Yeah, well, things are kind of shitty at the moment. Maybe it wasn't the best time."

She hugs him fiercely and says, "It was the perfect time, Danny, because I love you, too."

And Danny thinks maybe he wasn't all bad in his past lives if he's lucky enough to have found this woman…a woman who's actually an inch _shorter_ than him, like Heaven was listening to his silent prayers that he would stop falling for taller women…and he hugs her so tightly he thinks he might just break her in half. But his Gabby…she's stronger than she looks, and it makes him love her all the more.

He cups her chin in his hand, leans forward and kisses her softly. The sound of a throat clearing reaches his ears. He snaps back from Gabby and looks up to find Kono hovering in the doorway of his office with a stupidly huge grin on her face.

"Busted," is what Kono says.

"Well," Danny says, his face a little bit hot now as he rises and rubs his hands together, "it's not like professionalism goes on around here at all, anyway."

Gabby smiles up at them and Kono nods. "You have a point, _brah_," she says. "Okay, so Lukela said you wanted me and the recording we took of what Stan told us. What am I up to here?"

"I need you to show it to Rachel, beginning to end. Give her prompts whenever you see a tell from her, or whenever Stan says something you think Rachel might have information on. Watch her carefully, record your interview with her – just plain voice is fine."

Kono frowns. "Don't you think you'd know her tells better than I would?" she asks as Danny walks into the bullpen proper with her.

"Yes, but I'm too close to the whole situation to be able to trust myself to remain objective," he says. "Besides, I want to get down there and make sure Steve's not murdering someone or losing his shit over his mother."

Kono nods. "Well, I've been in with Doris and she's more tight-lipped than any suspect I've ever dealt with. I don't even know if torture would open that woman's mouth."

"Steve go in with her after you left?"

"I don't think so," Kono says with a shake of her head as she puts her hand on her office door handle. "But I peeked into the room he was in with Joe, and from the look on his face, I don't think he's getting what he wants from him, either."

"Not surprised. You worked out a place we can move Mamo, the kids, Malia and Gabby to?"

"Had a thought about that," Kono replies, moves to the tabletop computer and pulls up Google Maps. "You met my mom and my sister Kunani, right?"

Danny nods.

"Well, a cousin of my mother's has a house on Akaka Place, here in Honolulu." Kono pulls the streetview map up and shows Danny the two-story pale yellow house. "He's in Singapore for six months, and Mom's been keeping an eye on the place. We could put everybody there."

Danny rubs his hand down his face, realizing only just now that he's actually starting to sprout a full-out beard thanks to not shaving for two days straight. "I don't know, Kono. Your mother and your sister are already sticking their necks out being with Mamo, the kids, Mary. I'm not so sure I want any more of your family drawn into this, you know?"

Kono shrugs one shoulder. "Jojo's out of the country. And to be honest, Danny, if any of these people actually find Grace and the others, we're going to have more to worry about on _that_ front than we will about my mom's cousin in Singapore."

"You have a point," Danny concedes, but still… "Any connection to your family, though, could be the _way_ they find out where we've got these people all stashed. Especially with all the land dealings the Yakuza's into; it wouldn't take anything at all for them to track down where every relative of yours and Chin's lives, and check each of those places out."

"Which means they're all in danger already," Kono says. She rubs her temple with her forefinger. "I feel like so much of this is my fault."

"What?" Danny says. "Why?"

"Because I was stupid enough to fall for the inheritor of the Yakuza King title," Kono spits, and looks positively miserable. "I love him, Danny, I _still_ love him, even after what we talked about at Steve's house earlier. I can't just turn it off."

"Trust me, I know. I got one word for you: Rachel." Danny shrugs, shakes his head. "You all heard the damn voice mail.

Kono gives him a wry half-smile. "Yeah, I guess you _do _know. But what do I _do_ about it? I know HPD's got Adam under surveillance, but he knows a lot about me, about my family already. If he really _is_ bad, Danny, then he's too smart for HPD to know everything he's up to even if they have him in sight twenty-four/seven."

Danny sighs. "Steve thinks he's of more use to us _not_ locked up right now. That—" He's cut off by every single phone in the bullpen and all four offices suddenly ringing in unison. "The hell?" he says, looking down at the incoming call notification on the table computer.

Frowning, Kono accepts the call. A video screen opens, but it's blank; the call is only voice, not video activated. "Five-0," she says by way of answering it.

"_Ah, I believe I have the pleasure of addressing Officer Kono Kalakaua, have I not?"_ a thickly-accented and harsh-sounding voice says.

"Who is this?" Kono asks, immediately working in another window to trace the call.

"_Do not bother to trace the origins of my call. You will find it untraceable with your current technology,"_ the man says.

"Who are you?" Danny interjects, scowl deeply embedded on his face.

"_Detective Sergeant Daniel Williams, I presume. Are Lieutenant Kelly and Lieutenant Commander McGarrett present with you as well?"_

"I'm not telling you a damn thing until you identify yourself!" Danny barks, sharing a WTF look with Kono.

"_Very well, then. You bring your Lieutenant Commander and the fourth member of your team to the table, Detective Williams, and you tell McGarrett that the man who wants to speak to him? Is the man who did him the favor of killing Wo Fat."_


	31. Chapter 31

Danny's got that thing going on again where every ounce of his blood feels like ice water in his veins. He gestures to Kono, who's already got her phone out. She nods and starts sending a text, thank _God_ she speaks Danny-Hand. "You have a name?" Danny says, and God, he knows fear is leaking out of every single pore, but he's trying like hell to keep his voice like steel.

Kono nods once. The text is sent. No doubt Steve and Chin will be up here before Danny can blink.

"_You may call me…Sosai,"_ the voice responds.

"Sosai, huh?" Danny replies as Kono keeps desperately trying to trace the call, but keeps getting error message after error message. "What's that, Japanese?"

"_Very _good_, Detective. I'm honored that you recognize my native language."_

"Well, you hang around Yakuza screwballs enough, it's bound to rub off," Danny grouses and BAM! The glass double doors slam open, Steve thundering in like a herd of elephants with Chin hot on his heels.

Steve literally screeches to a halt near Danny, the rubber soles of his shoes squeaking on the over-waxed floor. He looks from Danny to Kono, then back again. Danny shakes his head once.

"_Now, Detective, there is no reason to be hostile."_

"Bullshit, there isn't," Danny replies. "You say you killed Wo Fat?" Danny's looking right at Steve when he says that, sees Steve's eyes go big and round. "Tell me, where were you standing, exactly, when you did that?"

Steve's staring at Danny, then looking down at the open line showing on the table computer screen.

"_On the roof of the Japanese Consulate building closest to the road,"_ Sosai replies. _"Directly behind the lovely Officer Kalakaua who, I think you will find if you have not already discovered it, was firing a gun filled with blanks."_

Kono's eyes get big and her face screws up in anger, mouth opening to say something, stopping just shy of it when Steve slices across his neck with his flattened hand for her to keep quiet. "This is Lieutenant Commander Steve McGarrett," he says. "Who are you? Why did you kill Wo Fat?"

"_I'm very glad you decided to join us, Lieutenant Commander. And Lieutenant Kelly?"_

Chin looks at Steve, who nods. "I'm here," Chin says.

"_Excellent. Now, Gentlemen and Lady, I have a proposition for you."_

The team members exchange looks.

"_If you agree to my generous offer, you and all those you care about will be left alone for as long as I am in command."_

"In command of _what_?" Steve asks.

"_Why, the Yakuza, of course, for starters. You see, those you have thus far dealt with have been much lower on the food chain than you believed. Adam Noshimuri is no more in charge of the Yakuza than his lovely girlfriend is."_

Kono blanches, glances at Chin.

"_His father was indeed one of my top operatives until he decided to turn against the very ideals he helped enforce on his rise through the ranks. And Wo Fat was a rogue, Commander McGarrett. Nothing more than a man who thought his way of removing me from power was to become so powerful he would actually be a force to be reckoned with. An ambition which sadly he would never reach so long as any McGarrett still breathed, thanks to his personal vendetta."_

Steve grinds his teeth together. "What do you want?"

"_It is very simple. I have taken care of your primary problem as a gesture of goodwill. With Wo Fat dead, you and your sister are quite safe, as are the members of your team and their respective loved ones."_

"Not buying it," Steve replies. "And you know why? Because my partner and I ran into a man who tried to kill us, held a Hawaiian family hostage _and_ avoided custody by murdering three police officers _well after_ Wo Fat was killed at the Consulate. So I don't believe a word you're saying."

"_Uunfortunately, Commander, and you do have my apologies for my tardiness in the matter, the man in question was Wo Fat's top aide, still acting under the orders of a man he did not yet realize no longer existed. He has been eliminated."_

Steve and Danny look at each other, then turn to look at the cousins.

"_Now, as I indicated, Commander, I have done this as a favor to you. I have ended the threat to your team. Wo Fat's concerns were childish and his focus misdirected. My own interests have nothing whatsoever to do with your task force, nor any member of your family or your…what is the word you use? Ah, yes, your _ohana_. Detective Williams' daughter is quite safe, Lieutenant Kelly's wife and your sister, the same."_

"The Yakuza aren't the only ones after us," Danny says. "So if what you're saying is true, then you've only handled one-third of our problem."

"_That is where you're wrong, Detective Williams," _Sosai counters. _"Your Central Intelligence Agency no longer needs to protect Commander McGarrett's mother, with Wo Fat gone and his entire organization being dismantled as we speak. By default, Lieutenant Commander Joe White's services in protecting her are also therefore no longer required. I have no interest in either of them. The death of Taro Fat was no more unwelcome than that of his son. The Navy and the CIA will not trouble you."_

"I don't believe you," Steve says.

"_That is unfortunate, Commander. But perhaps I have another piece of information you _will_ believe."_

"I doubt it," Steve tells him, face puckered in dismay as Kono's repeated attempts, with Chin's help, to trace the origin of the call continue to produce nothing but dead ends.

"_I give you my word of honor, Commander, that your loved ones are no longer in danger. In return, you will cease all investigations into the Yakuza both here and abroad, and you will destroy every piece of information you have gathered on the Yakuza, both local and beyond Oahu."_

"You've got to be kidding me," Steve says. "You're insane if you think we're going to let the Yakuza run rampant in this state just because you murdered Wo Fat."

"_That's not the reason you will leave us be,"_ Sosai replies smugly. _"The reason you will leave us be is that your families will remain safe so long as you do as I have requested. If you continue your father's activities, if you probe any further into the Yakuza than the lowest-level operatives committing petty crimes, then every single one of your task force, and every single one of the people they care about no matter where in the world they reside, will be dead within twenty-four hours."_

Danny sees the looks of horror on Chin's, Steve's and Kono's faces and knows his own's got to look the same.

"_I am a very powerful man. Much more connected throughout the world than the Noshimuris or Wo Fat and his father _ever_ were, McGarrett. The price for your lives and the lives of all whom you care about, is that you cease and desist your investigation into your mother's and Joe White's roles in this, that you stop looking into the Yakuza and that you leave us to our activities, which will in no way bring harm to any of you so long as you do not run afoul of us."_

"You want us to just let you take this state over," Steve says, voice dripping with hatred. "You're threatening to kill us all if we don't, am I getting that right?"

"_Exactly right,"_ Sosai says. _"And considering Detective Williams was so willing to send his daughter away," _Danny freezes, eyes wide, staring at the computer table, _"and considering the only female member of your team is in love with a Yakuza associate," _Kono grabs the edge of the table, knuckles white, swallows hard, _"and considering Lieutenant Kelly is starting his own family to expand that Kelly-Kalakaua clan even further,"_ Chin's fists clench at his sides, _"and considering you don't want your partner to leave the state and wish to keep your sister safe, I would suggest that the only answer you can give me is the one I seek."_

Steve walks away a few paces, runs his hands through his hair, turns, looks at each team member in turn, sets his jaw. "We're not going to let you threaten us into allowing you take over these islands," Steve says, and Danny doesn't know whether to throttle his partner, because this is their _families' lives_ hanging in the balance, or cheer him for saying what Danny himself probably would.

"_That is unfortunate," _Sosai replies. _"But if that is your final answer to the situation, then I have little choice but to advise you of this: if I were you, I would evacuate the Five-0 portions of the Iolani Palace within the next two minutes, or Dr. Asano, Mrs. Edwards, Commander White, Doris Meyer and Mr. Edwards, along with all those members of the Honolulu Police Department who are in your areas, won't live to scold you for not taking me up on my offer when you had the chance, Commander McGarrett."_

Steve's eyes widen.

"Holy shit!" Kono exclaims as Sosai disconnects the call. "Holy _shit_!"

Without a word, Steve's out the door, Chin's on the phone barking at the central reception desk in the palace, and Kono's running into her office and hauling Rachel out of her chair.

Danny sprints to his own office, grabs Gabby, says, "Come _on_!" as he drags her through the bullpen and out the glass doors.

They run and run, hearing Rachel and Kono following. Danny stops, turns, yells to Kono, "Get HPD out!" and grabs Rachel's hand. Running again with Gabby's hand in his left, Rachel's in his right, both women looking scared shitless, Danny feeling equally so. They reach the doors to the outside, Danny shoves them open even as others begin pouring out of the building.

"Run!" he tells the women, pushing them toward the steps. "Get as far away as you can!"

"Danny!" Gabby cries out, both she and Rachel stopped at the top step, turning back to face him. "What about _you_!"

Danny looks at them. "Anything happens to me, Rachel, you take Grace, you take Charlie, you get the hell out of Hawaii, go to my parents, you understand me?"

"Danny, _what_ are you-?" Rachel begins, but is cut off by Gabby's, "Where are you going?"

"I have to help Steve," Danny says, mind racing, everything seeming to move in slow motion. "_Go!"_ With that, he turns around and shoves his way back into the palace through doors that a throng of people are using to escape, pushes his way past panicked men and women, heads for the Five-0 part of the building, goes past the now-empty bullpen, down the hall toward Interrogation. Sees Stan running toward him.

"Get out!" he yells.

Stan is white as a sheet, nods, keeps running for the exit. Danny reaches the door to the hallway leading to the five rooms, throws it open just as Steve's yelling at Lukela and the four HPD officers to get the hell out _now_.

"Go, go, _go_!" Danny orders, pushing at the officers, shoving them toward the door.

"But Detect—" Lukela begins.

"_Now_!" Danny yells just as McGarrett is opening the door to one of the rooms.

"Danny, _go_!" Steve grates out, throwing the door open.

"No way, partner," Danny replies, and lifts his foot to run toward the room he figures Joe's in.

Everything around them shakes as the sound of a gigantic explosion fills the air. The resulting fireball slams into the metal hall door, busting out the two-by-two glass window near the top of it. The door rips from its hinges with a sickening screech, slams into Danny's back, twisting him to the right, even as the floor above his head begins to crack.

"_Steve_!" Danny cries out as he slams into the wall right next to the door of the first room. Concrete, plaster and metal begin raining down on him even as he twists to try and shove the door off his back. _Christ, that's going to leave a mark,_ he thinks.

But then an entire chunk of the floor above breaks away and Danny turns his face to the wall, the door sliding down his body. The door falls sideways, pushing him down with it. He lands hard on his butt, legs sticking straight out in front of him along the wall. When the chunk of floor lands it barely misses his legs, creating a triangle under which his whole body, head down and covered with his arms, is now trapped. More concrete falls, more rubble, and the large chunk of floor breaks in two.

The bottom edge of the top piece slides down the wall. It lands on his thigh and a jolt of pain shoots up his body as his femur snaps in two. He hears himself roar in agony and fights to stay conscious as yet another explosion rocks the palace.

"Oh…_God_…" Danny grates out, tears escaping his eyes. He gasps as the piece of floor on top of his leg moves, grinding the two edges of broken bone into the flesh and muscle of his leg. "_Steve…_"


	32. Chapter 32

Danny's literally willing himself _not_ to pass out from the pain. He hears an unintelligible yell, then hears the voice again and recognizes Joe.

"Go after Danny!"

"Mom's trapped behind the table, the ceiling caved in!"

"Danny's hurt, son. Get him out. I'll get your mother."

Danny's head is spinning. The broken chunk of wall poking into his thigh shifts again, more dust and pieces of the palace falling atop it, making it move. Danny cries out when it thunks down to the floor between his legs, ripping his dress pants and exposing the deep wound in his left thigh.

"Danny!"

"Steve," Danny whispers, feeling himself get woozy.

"Steve, listen to me. I've been taking care of her for more than twenty years. Danny needs you to take care of _him_."

_Yes_, Danny thinks, unable to make himself care that he's selfish enough to want Steve to, right at this very moment, choose him over his own mother. _Please, Steve..._because _Grace…_

"Dammit!" Steve growls, voice closer than it was before. "Danny! Danny, you okay?"

_No, no, not okay_, Danny thinks, because he can't make himself figure out how to actually get those words out of his mouth _oh fuck, fuck, hurts worse than the ACL did, ohmagod…_

"Danny?"

Things are moving, he can hear scraping, feels the chunk of concrete slide along the floor a bit until his right leg stops it. Feels hot, heat, something very very hot near his feet, blinks, tries to focus through the dust hanging in the air, through the darkness now that the power's out. Sees flickering. Realizes the flickering is coming from fire.

"Oh, God, _Danny_," Steve says, and Danny feels the piece of floor that broke his damn leg being slid along the wall, down past his feet, can see better now that it's gone, sees Steve, big goddamn Boy Scout Steve come to his rescue, he is never going to live this down. "Your _leg_."

"Fuck," Danny manages to say because, yeah, that about sums it up, mother of _God_.

"Fire's blocking the exit," Steve says hurriedly, Danny struggling to focus, to absorb Steve's voice, the words he's speaking. "Joe!" Steve calls out, turning his face to the left. Danny sees Steve's eyes get big, sees the look of disbelief and horror on his face, turns his head to look behind him, careful to hold his leg still.

Fire is raging on both ends of the hall now, just about hitting Danny's feet on one side, and blocking three of the interrogation room entrances behind him.

Danny swallows hard. There's no way out.

And Steve is looking everywhere at once, up, down, left right, behind him, in front of them. "_Joe!_" Steve hollers, gets to his feet, runs to the door of the room his mother was in. Freezes in the doorway, just _staring._

"Shit!" Steve breathes.

"Steve?" Danny says, so quietly he doubts his partner heard him. Leans his head against the wall as the sharp pain in his leg throbs full-out. As he feels the leg starting to go numb.

"Okay, this is going to hurt like a motherfucker," Steve says, and Danny sees the man has a long piece of wood, broken and splintered on both ends. "But I have to get you the hell out of here."

"No…man…left behind…" Danny grinds out, "and…all that."

Steve nods once, looks at Danny's leg, then at the length of black-painted wood in his hand. He reaches into his cargo pants pocket, pulls out his wallet, shoves it at Danny's face. "Bite down on this."

Oh, Christ, Danny knows this, has seen it both in the field and in enough movies to know this, this is going to _hurt_. "Finally brought your wallet," he gasps, then leaves his mouth open, lets Steve shove that wallet into his mouth, bites down hard with a groan in anticipation of the impending pain.

"Yeah, babe, brought my wallet just for you," Steve says, laser focused on the task at hand. He spreads Danny's legs a little further apart, lays the wood down between them, snug up against Danny's crotch which makes Danny let out a warning growl. Steve, the idiot, of course he does this, he fucking _grins_, then takes off the unbuttoned overshirt he was wearing atop a white tee shirt, pulls a jackknife out of another pants pocket, _Christ, are those damn things bottomless_?

He takes the knife, slices one sleeve of the shirt off, then the other sleeve and Danny's feet are _way_ too hot, and the crackle of the fire is _way_ too loud and oh, God, if he doesn't bleed out internally or burn to death, Steve and his jungle tactics might just do him in, is what he's thinking, and then Steve's slicing the rest of the shirt down its middle from collar to tails.

"Now, bite down _hard_," Steve says, "and I'm sorry in advance."

Danny squeezes his eyes closed, feels McGarrett lift his busted leg, cries out through the wallet stuffed in his mouth, feels spit gathering around the edges of it. "Stay with me, Danny!" Steve barks and Danny thinks, _easy for you to say,_ even as he tries his best to obey.

Steve slides the wood under his leg and Danny opens his eyes to see that all four pieces of Steve's shirt are already under the wood, evenly spaced. Steve starts down at Danny's ankle, tying a tight knot that lashes the wood to it. Then he moves up to just below Danny's knee, does the same thing with the other torn-off sleeve.

"Okay, now, bite down again, Danny, and do _not_ pass out on me. I need you conscious, I'll need you to help me get us out of here."

Danny nods once, feels sweat pouring down his face and neck, sees Steve's in the same boat, chest and armpits soaking sweat through the tee shirt, realizes his own sweat isn't all due to his injury, because the fire's even _closer_ now.

Steve brings the ends of the fabric positioned about four inches above Danny's knee up, looks Danny in the eye as he loops the ends around each other, and then ties it…jerks the ends of it. Danny cries out, tears pouring out of his eyes, spittle now dripping from his chin, the leather of Steve's wallet soaked. He slams the left side of his head against the wall, _anything_ to get rid of the goddamn _pain_ in his _leg_.

"Still with me?" Steve asks, even as he's moving to the fourth strip of shirt not two inches above the open wound left by the jagged concrete.

"Mmnn," Danny whimpers, and would be embarrassed if he could think to be embarrassed through the agony he's in.

"Okay, one more time," Steve says, and doesn't warn Danny this time as he ties the damn thing so tight Danny wonders if his partner just amputated his leg altogether, but no, he looks down and the thing's still attached, and now Steve's grabbing at the wallet saying, "Gimme."

Danny opens his mouth, Steve takes the wallet, shoves it back into his pocket. "Joe and Mom got out," Steve explains, moving around behind Danny and putting his hands under his armpits. "I'm getting you out the same way."

With that, Steve hikes him up. Danny quickly moves his right foot to support himself and thinks maybe it's a good thing his left leg's even _more_ numb now, or maybe not so much, but what the hell, there's a way out, they might actually make it out of this.

Steve pulls Danny backwards, his good foot and bad alike bumping along the debris on the floor. They reach the door of Doris's interrogation room, Danny gasping for air, starting to cough from all the dust and smoke filling the small space that's left to them. He can hardly see Steve through all the smoke, but feels his partner move to his side, hike Danny's left arm over his shoulder, bring his own arm around Danny's back so his right hand is firmly planted under Danny's armpit.

"Okay, there's a heap of debris here, and it leads up to the next floor. We have to climb this, Danny, to get out, do you understand me?"

Steve starts moving him forward, but Danny's got very little concept of anything. He's spatially disoriented, he can hardly breathe, his leg's throbbing with three-second intervals of stabbing pain through it, he feels weak, like Steve's the only thing holding him up.

"Danny, you with me, buddy? Come on."

"Ugh," Danny manages to get out.

"I'm going to have to carry you out on my back. There's no way you'll get up this with that leg."

"Unnhh?" Danny asks, and is pretty sure it actually came out as words.

"No comments, you're going piggyback, Danno," Steve says and Danny thinks yes, he knows piggyback, but before he can put it all together, he feels Steve in front of him like a solid wall, feels Steve crouch a bit, feels his forearms being yanked around Steve's neck and hears Steve say, "I need you to hold on, Danny. I have to use my hands to climb."

Danny's forehead drops onto Steve's shoulder, he's so goddamn tired, everything hurts, what the hell.

"Danny, come on, hold _on_!"

Danny can't move, can't make his arms coordinate, can't figure out what's going on, why is he on Steve's back? Then Danny feels Steve's hands on both of his, which right now are hanging down either side of his partner's neck.

"Danny, _please_," Steve says. "I can't do this without you."

And Danny doesn't know if maybe Steve's talking about getting them out of there or something else altogether but he feels Steve's hands close around his, pulling his hands closer to each other until the fingers of Danny's left hand are finally touching those of his right. Steve hikes him up a bit, Danny's face comes a little forward, Steve turns his own head to the right, Danny feels Steve's lips on his left temple.

"I won't leave you here. If _you_ die, we _both_ die."

And Danny raises his head, blinks his eyes once, can barely even tell that's Steve's face right next to his, knows he's got to do this because no way is he going to let this be it for them, no fucking _way_, not with Gabby and Grace out there, not with Mary and Chin and Kono and Malia, not with Kamekona and Charlie and hell, even Rachel and Stan, Joe and Doris. Danny's family in New Jersey, and Five-0, and him and Steve and their mutual crazy, and he will _not_ be the one who takes Lieutenant Commander Steven J. McGarrett down once and for all. No fucking _way._

So he clasps his hands together over top of Steve's sternum, using every bit of strength he has left even as the rest of his body hangs limply along Steve's back.

"That's it," Steve says encouragingly, and suddenly the room is so much hotter and Danny knows they're trapped in there by fire without even having to look. He bows his head to rest on Steve's shoulder.

"Go, SuperSEAL," Danny whispers.

"Yes, _sir_," Steve says.

And he starts to climb.


	33. Chapter 33 and Notes

Danny can hear well enough, but it's the trying to make sense out of what he's hearing that he's having a little trouble with. Steve's grunts and groans, his occasional curses, that much is from the climbing, Danny's fairly certain.

But then he hears something else. And Steve stumbles so hard that it makes Danny cry out in pain when his leg flies outward and his thigh slams back into Steve's ass (Danny knows there's a joke in there somewhere but _fuck_, it hurts). Steve's hands are suddenly gripping Danny's forearms painfully tight, and then there's a familiar voice that just makes Danny sag with relief.

"Give me your hand, son."

One of Steve's hands leaves one of Danny's arms, and there's a sudden upward movement and more jostling but by this point Danny's leg really _has_ gone numb, so it's all he can do to register Steve is actually trying to get his attention.

"Danny, let go, it's okay," is what Steve's saying and what, is he _crazy_? How the hell is he expecting Danny to let go, because Danny will fall on his busted leg and what the fuck, anyway? He feels hands trying to pry his own apart from where they're still wrapped around each other over Steve's breastbone, but no, he's not letting go, because Steve's getting him _out_ of there!

"Where's Mom?"

"She's safe."

"Joe, don't..." Danny feels and hears Steve sigh. "Don't run off."

Danny's cheek is resting on Steve's shoulder and whoever-it-was has stopped tugging at Danny's hands, so he's good.

"Just get your partner out to the medics."

"She's already running. Isn't she."

Steve's tone of voice gets Danny's attention. He opens his eyelids and from his vantage point, half his field of vision's filled by Steve's neck. In the other half, he can see the side of Joe's face.

"Joe, some Japanese man who says _he's_ the head of the Yakuza told my team we'd all be left alone, and be safe, if we stopped going after the Yakuza here in Hawaii and abroad."

"He call himself Sosai?" Joe asks.

Danny struggles to pay attention, leg throbbing like a sonofabitch.

There's a moment of silence.

"Whatever he told you, Steve, he'll stand by it. But you have to understand that there's more to your mother and me and this whole thing than you will ever know."

"Are…" Steve's voice trails off. He hikes Danny up to keep him in place. Danny moans softly at the movement. "Are you my father?"

"I think you know the answer to that."

Steve's Adam's apple bobs when he swallows hard. "Steve," Danny whispers, feeling like he's about two blinks away from passing out completely.

Steve looks askance at him, and Danny sees a quick movement to the right. He struggles to lift his head enough to see what it was, and finds that Joe White is gone.

"Going to get you out of here, Danny," Steve says, voice devoid of emotion.

"Your mom," Danny slurs, running out of the will to keep himself awake.

"Gone, Danny. So is Joe." Steve's jogging now, keeps zigging and zagging, Danny figures probably going around rubble or something on their way out of the palace.

"Go after…them…"

Steve shakes his head. Danny's eyelids flutter closed. "Come on," is what Steve says, like Danny could go anywhere other than wherever Steve takes him in his condition.

And Danny sort of loves his partner an awful lot right now, but at the same time knows that Steve's world has just completely gone off its axis once again. He wishes he could stay awake to try and help somehow, but when he hears Chin's and Kono's voices yell his and Steve's names, he allows himself the blessed relief of darkness.

* * *

When Danny wakes up, the first thing he notes is that he's no longer in pain. The second thing is that there are beeps that are instantly recognizable as monitors, and he guesses he must be the guy hooked up to them. The third thing is that there's a bit of a heaviness along his left side, and the fourth thing is that his right hand is being held by a hand that's very soft.

He struggles for a moment to get his eyelids open, and when he does, the first thing he sees is Gabby's head resting on the side of the hospital bed he's lying in; it's her hand holding his right one. His eyes move slowly around and he sees that his left leg is lying atop the light blue blanket covering the rest of him, a cast encasing it thigh to mid-shin, all being held up about five inches off the bed by a crane sling.

His eyes continue left and he sees Grace asleep, nestled into his side with his arm around her back holding her close. Then he looks up to find that standing with his arms folded over his chest, staring out of the hospital room window, is his partner.

As though picking up on the vibe that Danny's finally conscious, Steve looks at him, and while he smiles, there's a look of sadness, maybe even of resignation, in his eyes. "Hi," Steve whispers, letting his hands fall to his sides and coming to stand on the side of the bed nearest Gracie. "How you feeling?"

"Good," Danny says, and it's the truth because he figures he's got some heavy painkillers in him at the moment. He remembers the last things he heard as Steve was saving his life. As Steve was letting his mother and a man who could very well be his biological father go, to save Danny's _life_. Danny swallows hard. "I'm sorry," is what he says, and Steve frowns.

"What for? You're the one in the hospital with a busted leg."

"Yeah, but I wouldn't be here if you hadn't gotten me out. And you lost your mom and Joe because of me. So…I'm sorry."

Steve shakes his head. "Isn't a world where I would've left you behind to try and keep them here." He looks down. "You've got a couple ladies who wouldn't have been too happy with me if I had."

Danny looks down at Gabby and Grace, both still sound asleep. Then he looks back up at Steve. "What are you going to do?" he whispers.

"Nothing, Danny. I think it's pretty clear they don't want to be in my life. So I'll stick with the people who've made it pretty clear they _do_."

A movement at the door catches Danny's attention. And his eyes widen because it's _Catherine_ of all people, and when she smiles at Steve and he smiles back at her, Danny knows it's going to somehow all be okay, Sosai's threats, Joe's and Doris's apparent re-disappearance and all.

He allows himself to drift back to sleep to the backdrop of a Navy man and Navy woman who love each other very much, embracing.

* * *

_Four months later…_

Danny's not entirely sure how the heck his _ohana_ has made it through the last few months, but he figures love has a lot to do with it.

He's currently ensconced in a chair on the upper deck overlooking the water at Steve's house, and can hear the shower shutting off. It's been a bit of a rocky road with Steve and him, because for some reason, getting Danny out of the palace has given Steve the notion that he's completely responsible for restoring Danny to one hundred percent.

Which is really, really annoying.

Thank God for Gabby and Catherine. Gabby, because she insists upon removing Danny from Steve's overprotective watch quite frequently, the better for her to show him that he doesn't need an uncasted leg to make love. Danny blushes at the thought of two nights ago.

And Catherine, because _she_ insists that while she's well aware (as is Gabby, apparently), that Steve and Danny come as sort of a weird hyphenated duo called Steve-and-Danny, she is under no circumstances getting intimate with _her_ man while Danny's sitting down on the couch with Grace, his leg elevated, watching _Tangled_for the five hundredth time.

So, yeah. Today's the day where Gabby introduces Danny to the new house she bought two weeks ago, which the entirety of Five-0 and extended friends and family - Grace included - have been helping her fix up to make it easier for Danny to maneuver as his cast comes off next week and physical therapy begins in earnest. Today's the day where Steve has to get his Control Freak under control itself, and where Catherine finally gets her man all to herself twenty-four/seven.

It's a day of celebration, and a day that's certain to be filled with many versions of Aneurism Face.

But it's also a day of sadness. Because before Danny and Grace are officially moved in with Gabby, he has a goodbye he has to say, which is where Steve will be taking him as soon as he's finished getting dressed. Today's the day where Rachel, having testified against Stan last month, is going into witness protection with Charlie. Rachel Chambers Williams Edwards will cease to exist, to be replaced with a name Danny will never know. He'll never see the mother of his child again.

The hell of it is, neither will his child.

He's shed more tears, as has Rachel, over the past two months than he thinks he shed back when he had sent Grace away not knowing when he'd see her again. Grace is old enough to know that her mother's life is in danger, and understands that's why she has to go away.

But that doesn't mean it's been easy getting through this time, with Rachel constantly under guard just in case Sosai doesn't keep his word. With all Five-0's evidence destroyed in the explosion, and everything on their supposedly triple-secure cloud erased courtesy of an unknown entity, Rachel helping take Stan down was pretty much all they had left to show for the hell the team has been through.

Now with Stan's conviction and a sentencing that's happening next week which will keep him behind bars for a minimum of sixty-five years, and with the entirety of Stan's family from his sister to his brother to his parents having all been arrested for crimes similar to those Stan himself had committed, Charlie's not got anyone _but_ Rachel to take care of him. Because they'd found the DNA test results Stan had squirreled away, and Edwards _is_ Charlie's father.

Since he's a baby, WITSEC says yes, he can go with his mother. But the girl is too old, could slip up, could make mistakes. Grace isn't allowed to go with Rachel.

On the one hand, yes, the best thing that could ever happen for Danny, because it means he won't be forced to never see his girl again.

On the other hand, completely devastating for Rachel and for Grace, to be cut off like this from each other. A girl needs her mother, and Danny's promised Rachel ten times over that he'll somehow find some way for them to stay in contact, in spite of him not knowing where Rachel will be or how to even find her. But he won't give up trying, for Grace's sake, and Rachel will hold on to the hope that she'll be able to be there - even secretly - when Grace graduates from high school.

All of which, of course, now leaves Grace in Danny's sole custody, with Rachel's full blessing, given through sobs of anguish. And Danny, you know, yes of _course _he feels for her. But he also thinks logically about it, about the fact that Rachel brought this all on herself. About how she didn't come to Danny earlier, when maybe they could've prevented so much of what happened. About how she put Danny's daughter's life in mortal danger day in and day out by shacking up with a man who was in cahoots with the likes of Adam Noshimuri.

Who himself is now cooling his heels in the same cell that had once held Wo Fat, leaving Kono intellectually - and as a police officer - glad, but emotionally hurting...something they are _all_ helping her deal with.

And thus far, focused more on Stan, Rachel, Grace, Charlie, Danny and his leg and Kono, Steve hasn't tried to find out where Joe and his mother are, hasn't looked into what else the two could've been involved in more than he already knew. He hasn't done anything to or with any member of the Yakuza, some of whom Five-0 knows are there conducting business on Oahu. And there's been no further contact from Sosai, the mysterious figure that neither Danny nor Steve nor any of their team have been able to get any further information on via casual questioning.

Danny asked Steve, one month after their palace headquarters had been destroyed, whether he was just going to let Sosai and the Yakuza get away with it. Steve had looked at him with a face that Danny was hard-pressed to place, and replied, "_Ohana_ comes before anything, Danny," and left it at that. And yeah, Danny knows it isn't completely over; that Steve will probably start looking into them again within the year. He hopes, however, that the fact that Catherine's now land-bound for good and staying with McGarrett will keep the man from going as far into a new investigation as he'd gone into the original.

Malia's three months pregnant, so Chin's been all over Danny about taking care of babies and man-feelings about your newborn baby, and all the stuff Danny's way happy to talk about because for him it's all about how much he treasures his own little girl. Two days ago, Steve even told Danny that Ben Bass showed up at the palace where Steve, Kono and a whole team of architects, construction engineers and construction workers were assembled to get that palace restored and put Five-0 back where they belonged. So maybe Kono's blond-haired love is back for good, is what Danny's hoping for her.

And Danny's got his daughter now; he's got all kinds of arrangements for taking care of her worked out between Gabby, Kono's older sister who fell in _love_ with Grace, and more members of the Kelly and Kalakaua families. Oh, and Kamekona, who belly-laughs like Danny's never heard before when Grace teases him as she does.

Grace is young. She won't forget her mother, and Danny won't _let_ her forget her mother. Because for all of Rachel's wrongdoings and missteps, ultimately she did the right thing for both her children, and for the sake of justice. It's not a sweet, happy, apple pie ending for Grace, Rachel, Danny or Charlie. But it's the best that they can do given Rachel's various crimes. It was either she turns state's evidence or she goes behind bars until Grace is old enough to be a grandmother.

It's not an apple pie ending for Steve or Mary Ann either, except that Mary's sticking around Hawaii for the foreseeable future, having sub-leased the nice two-bedroom pad that Danny only called home for a month before the shit hit the fan. She's got herself a job with Mamo, and she often takes Grace for a 'girls day out,' having bonded with her at Mamo's little shack on the beach.

No. No completely happy endings, but they're all alive, they're all healthy - well, Danny's nearly there, but his leg will give him shit for the rest of his life and doesn't that just figure - and nobody is going anywhere, Sosai or Yakuza or threats to lives notwithstanding. Rachel's permanent departure notwithstanding.

Danny sighs, shifting his leg in the chair that's facing him, which he's using as a resting place for it. "You all right?" he hears Steve ask, as he (typical, pain-in-the-ass) ninjas up behind him.

Danny squints up at him through the bright morning sun, shrugs. "Hard to think I'll never see her again. That _Grace_ will never see her again." Danny shakes his head. "I think I'm going to have to put her in therapy to help her cope."

Steve rests his hand on his partner's shoulder, both men looking out of the sparkling too-blue water. "Maybe," Steve says. "But don't forget she's got an awfully big _ohana_, Danny." Steve squeezes his shoulder. "We'll all get each other through."

Steve's hand falls away as he disappears back into his bedroom, and Danny thinks, well, they do still have this Sosai to wonder about, and maybe Joe White and Doris Meyer to find someday, though he's not sure if Steve really _wants _to know anything more than he already does.

And yes, Rachel and Charlie are going away for good, leaving Grace without her mom, and all the painful implications of that happening to a nine-year old girl. And Stan's behind bars, and Wo Fat's dead, and from what they can tell, Governor Denning has nothing to do with _any_ criminal element, so Five-0's bullpen – alongside the Iolani Palace itself – is being rebuilt and they're still functioning even as they each work to pick up the pieces of their lives.

And Steve has Cath, and Danny has Gabby and Grace. And Five-0 has each other and all the family members that go with them.

So he guesses Steve's right. No matter what comes next, come hell or high water, physical therapy, lots of tears and probably beach weddings in their not-too-distant futures, they _will_ all get each other through.

Because Five-0? Is just another word for family.

And they've proven that nothing and no one can tear _this_ family apart.

**...may the adventure continue...**

* * *

_**Author's Note**: __I'm grateful for those of you who've been with me every day as each new chapter's been posted. For those who've taken the time to review, to let me know how they feel about it. There's nothing like knowing you're helping fulfill withdrawal for peoples' favorite show by giving them something that was hopefully equal parts exciting, heart-wrenching and humorous. While much of this could probably fit into a season-long arc in between and amongst procedural Five-0 cases, if it were all spread out the way the McGarrett/Williams arcs have been over the first two seasons, I've no idea if any of this is in line with, or totally opposite to, whatever Peter Lenkov and Co. have in mind for us starting this fall...so if anything turns out to be similar, then HOOYAH as Steve might say. :-)_

_Thank you for sticking with me and for keeping your seatbelts on. It was not only a roller-coaster ride to read, but one helluva thing to write, and I'm quite proud of it._

_**Shameless self-promotion**: For those of you who enjoy my writing, I invite you to check out my two published novels on Amazon or Smashwords, available in every ebook format that exists. It's a new kind of vampire I've introduced in my "Takers" series of books, and thus far all the reviews I've received from readers have been positive. So feel free to go to either site, search for Takers Chris Davis and look at a sample of the books. If you like what you see, and if you buy them and read them, please leave me a review on whichever site you purchased it from – good, bad or indifferent. It counts just as much as reviews of my fanfic do!_

_Thank you all!_

_Chris Davis_

_aka_

_TB's LMC_


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